What’s Mary Trump’s beef with her uncle, Donald Trump? All you need to know about the ‘toxic’ family rifts described in Too Much and Never Enough
The US president’s niece is facing a legal challenge in her aims to publish Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, about her uncle and their family – but what was it that drove Trump family members apart?
Mary Trump has written a book titled: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, about her uncle, President Donald Trump, and their family. It is set to be published on July 28, though there is an ongoing legal challenge to its publication.
She is the daughter of Fred Trump Jnr, the president’s older brother and once-heir apparent to the Trump family's real-estate business. Her mother is Linda Clapp, a flight attendant whom “Freddy” met while training to be a pilot.
Fred Trump Jnr and Clapp married in 1962, and had two children: Fred Trump III and Mary. Both Mary and her brother were named after their paternal grandparents, Fred Trump Snr and his Scottish immigrant wife, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. The couple's marriage was short-lived. They divorced in 1970 after eight years of marriage, as Freddy's alcoholism got more and more out of control. Freddy died at the age of 42 in 1981 due to complications from alcoholism. He was considered a black sheep of the family for not taking an interest in the family's real-estate business.
When Fred Trump Snr died in 1999, Mary Trump and her brother contested his will, which left them a substantially smaller inheritance than the other Trump grandchildren. The issue at stake was how Fred Snr’s wealth was dispersed. Most of his fortune was split between his four surviving children. But Mary and Fred III believed they deserved what would have been their father's share of the inheritance.
Donald Trump responded by cutting them off the family's medical insurance plan. It was a tough blow for Fred III, who had just welcomed a baby with serious health issues.
Mary Trump bashed the decision to cut the medical benefits in an interview with the New York Daily News in December 2000, saying her “aunt and uncles should be ashamed of themselves”. Mary Trump was referring to Donald Trump, Robert Trump and Maryanne Trump Barry, who had been named executors of their father's estate.