Politics

Trump is trying to cheat his way to re-election, niece says

By Helen Cook

New York, Aug 14 (efe-epa).- Mary Trump is a relative of the president of the United States, but she is now trying to do her part to thwart his re-election bid.

Donald Trump’s niece, whose tell-all book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” was published last month, said in an interview with Efe that the country is on the “precipice of something quite awful” if he returns to office for another four years.

She also said Trump is already engaging in dirty tricks ahead of the election by trying to undermine the legitimacy of mail-in voting during a pandemic.

Mary Trump was referring to the president’s ramped-up criticism of Democrats’ vote-by-mail efforts, including a tweet late last month in which he said the 2020 election will be marred by unprecedented fraud and – perhaps jokingly – questioned whether it should be delayed until people can safely vote in person.

In remarks to Efe from her residence in Massachusetts, the 55-year-old clinical psychologist and daughter of the president’s older brother (the late Fred Trump Jr., who died of an alcohol-related illness at age 42) also said the president has “severe personality disorders” that are the result of his upbringing.

Question: What’s your main goal with this book? You mention in it that you feel that it’s your patriotic duty.

Answer: I feel that in 2016 a lot of American voters didn’t have all the information they needed in order to make a responsible choice during the election, and I think part of that was how badly the media mishandled their coverage of both candidates … I had no idea that Donald was going to run for president or get the nomination, and by then it certainly would have been too late … But now I feel that I have something concrete to point to, and, you know, I think this country is on the precipice of something quite awful if Donald were to stay in the Oval Office for another four years.

Q: Even after everything that you’ve described that’s going wrong in the US, do you think that there’s a high probability that he will be reelected?

A: I worry about it not because I think people want him to continue in the Oval Office. I’m worried about it because he’s already cheating. He’s undermining people’s confidence in the election outcome, he’s essentially trying to destroy the United States Post Office so people can’t vote by mail in the middle of a pandemic. It’s like the stuff of really bad dystopian science fiction at this point. So, yeah, I’m not worried that he’s going to win … I’m worried that he’s gonna cheat his way into the Oval Office again.

Q: And you state that Donald Trump has all the characteristics of a narcissist. You say he’s probably got anti-social personality disorder, dependent personality disorder … Do you hope that now that you’ve given your professional opinion on his state of mind, do you think that someone in a position of authority will actually look into it?

A: You know that was one of my hopes. People need to start talking about his mental health, or lack thereof. They need to start talking about his psychological makeup. In this country, we talk about candidates’ physical health all the time. But for whatever reason, talking about their mental health is often out of bounds. And I don’t know why that’s the case but I would like that to change because honestly a candidate’s mental health is infinitely more important to how this country operates than their physical health, which really affects only them. But the kinds of severe personality disorders that Donald has affect all of us.

Q: You talk about the end of democracy in America if he’s elected again on the third of November. Do you see him as a dictator?

A: It’s really hard to think in those terms in America. But Donald isn’t really the problem. It’s the people surrounding him who are using him in his position to their own benefit. So it’s people like Bill Barr, who runs our Department of Justice, which he’s totally destroying. Honestly, people like Mike Pompeo, who’s our secretary of state, who is also dismantling the State Department, which is why our relationships with our traditional allies are in such terrible shape right now.

Q: In the book you say that Donald Trump and the rest of the family basically destroyed your father, and you couldn’t let them destroy your country. Do you really think that that’s what Donald Trump is doing right now?

A: I do. I know it sounds hyperbolic. I wouldn’t have said the same thing two years ago. But I think that there’s a lot of evidence for it now, you know. Two years ago, I was more concerned about the ways in which he seems to be weakening our Western alliances, which we’ve spent decades forging. I was worried about him unilaterally backing out of treaties, which we spent years putting together. Now, however, where we’re dealing with a deadly, highly contagious virus that is absolutely out of control in about 80 percent of this country, people are dying every day. More people are going to die because absolutely nothing is being done by the federal government. We’re on the brink of an economic depression, millions of people are out of work, millions of people aren’t getting help from the federal government in order to pay their rent or feed their children

Q: And you also say in the book’s sub-heading that Donald Trump is the most dangerous man in the world. That would put him above dictators. Why would you say the most dangerous man in the world?

A: Because the head of the American government has been considered the most powerful person on the planet for a long time now. So he has a lot more power than somebody like Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin. And by power I mean that in brute-force terms, in terms of our nuclear arsenal and our defense system, which is insanely large and incredibly well-funded … So he’s dangerous, not just because of the power and not just because of his very deep psychopathologies. He’s the most dangerous man on the planet because of the combination of those two things.

Q: How do you think that Fred Trump, the president’s father, influenced the Donald Trump that we see today?

A: Probably the most profound effect that my grandfather’s behavior had on Donald was the fact that he saw what my dad went through. My father was seven-and-a-half years older, so Donald had the benefit of distance and grew up essentially watching my grandfather abuse, humiliate and ultimately dismantle my dad because my father happened to be a kind person, a generous person, a sensitive person who had interests outside of real estate … So, Donald rejected the idea of … being wrong or apologizing for anything because whenever my dad did those kinds of things my grandfather essentially beat him up, figuratively speaking. EFE-EPA

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