Why Uncle Donald Doesn't Want to Shake Off Natalie

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It is inappropriate. It's wrong. I think he's taking advantage, but nobody seems to have a problem with it. This is the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Joanna Cole's welcome, and we have such a good conversation for you today with a Trump relative. Yes, you've seen her on the podcast before. She is a Daily Beast favourite, Mary Trump, who really delves into the similarities between Donald and his father. How cruel Donald Trump's father was to him, and how that cruelty is now playing out for the rest of us. We talk about the strange picture that Donald Trump's father kept in his wallet, and would whip out and show Mary to make her feel really uncomfortable. We talk about his wild weaves, and what on earth was he talking about when he suggested that Iran take out San Diego and Los Angeles? What was he talking about when he said that he knew more about anything than anybody, anywhere in the world? What was he actually projected? Well, who better than a member of his own family who is a trained clinical psychologist? She is so articulate about his language, about his behaviour, about how he projects his insecurities, and what it's doing to the rest of us. So before we get into it, let me just ask you please to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast, wherever you get your podcast, be it Spotify, Apple, YouTube. We're independent media, which is how we have conversations like this. We don't have a corporate be a myth at our back telling us what we can and can't say, but we appreciate your support. Share it with a friend, and this one in particular is a really good one to spark conversations. So no more time to waste. Let's get into it with a claimed author and psychologist and niece of, well, the most famous man in the world. He's Donald Trump. She's Mary Trump. Mary, welcome. We have a Trump in the house. We have Mary Trump in the house. Mary Trump, welcome back. We haven't seen you for a couple of months. We haven't joined, but it's great to be back. I love hanging out with you. Especially during these very trouble, trouble times. Oh my goodness. You know, one of the things Mary Trump that is keeping me sane is reading your sub stack, which I recommend to everybody. I noticed you've got 447,000 subscribers. Congratulations. That is a huge bestseller on sub stack. It is, you write so well. You've got such a good sense of humor and you really get into the nitty gritty of how your uncle, Donald, president of the United States and leader somewhat incredulously of the free world, how he thinks. But I wanted to just say, you start your sub stack or in the description of your sub stack, you start with a wonderful quote from Oscar Wilde. I wanted you to talk about it and why you chose it. For those who don't know it, it's the gods are strange. It is not our vices. Only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what is good in us, good, gentle, human loving. It's very Oscar Wilde. You're a psychologist. Why did you choose this quote for your sub stack? Well, as you can imagine, one of the most alarming things, especially for somebody who comes from the cat family I come from and has seen firsthand what cruelty can do to a sensitive kind, gentle, human. I have been since, since Donald came on the political scene in 2015, increasingly alarmed by the extent to which and the rapidity with which we have become an increasingly unkind, unepithetic society and the ways in which he's been able to convince people that kindness is weakness, cruelty is strength, which is again the ethos of the family he and I both grew up in. To make it seem that the only real way to be a strong human being is to be unepithetic, unepithetic and dismissive of other people's rights and cruel to the most vulnerable among us. So the idea of kindness, the necessity of kindness and empathy, have been increasingly on my mind and I started the sub stack. It's actually almost five years old now, when the Donald was just out of power from his first term had just ended in January 2021. But we were continuing to see his influence in the Republican Party and the Republican Party's willingness to bend the knee and rehabilitate this man and to a person embrace his ethos of cruelty, corruption, humiliation, etc. So I've tried in the last five years to make sure that I pay attention to those, continue to pay attention to those things because if we're going, not just to survive but to get beyond this point, it's not going to be enough to win it for Democrats to win an election. We're going to have to change our culture. And that's going to be quite an undertaking. But we can't do it if we don't talk about it, if we don't even acknowledge it. So that's what I try to do. 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With the works just artificial, it's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city, let them take let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. That's, this is the first of all price to pay and it's going to be a little embarrassing. I mean, what is he talking about there, Mary? You talk about cruelty. He's envisaging two major American cities, being taken out, whatever that means. By a wrong. I mean, he's talking about he's pretending, I should just say the run up to that is him pretending that we've won the war in Iran. Yes, there's so much there and I think it always needs to be pointed out that so much of what he's saying there is false. You know, he's claimed many times now that we've won the war, we're about to win a war, we're going to win the war and of course we've lost it and we're continuing to lose it. There's no end in sight. He's also revealing his his obsessions. He's a very violent man and that stems in part from his insecurities and from the fact that, you know, his father was a sociopath and he grew up being taught that in order to be accepted or approved of he needed to be a quote unquote killer and any any side of kindness or empathy or gentleness was frowned upon because that that stuff made you a loser and of course my dad was all of those things. So my dad was the object lesson of what not to be in the Trump family despite the fact that he was actually the only truly self-made person in the whole family. So the the reason I sometimes post is transcripts or often I read them because one of the reasons we got here is because the corporate media has been been engaged in this project of St. Washington Donald so they just they try to make sense of what he says to make it more palatable to people which is just a way to normalize him because if you actually listen to him or read what he said it's either incomprehensible replete with delusions or terrifying and terrifying would be how to best describe what he just said. What I think is is also worth discussing is that this is the end result of over a decade of Donald's using mic people's using microaggressions to soften the ground to get a crap in 2026 to cure the annihilation of two American cities like that's how pathological we've all become that that's an acceptable thing for the president of the United States to say among a certain set of people. Well also I mean when you think about this is a man who used to be a Democrat he had a very popular reality show with the apprentice Hollywood you know birthed that television project I get how you might attack LA for being lefty and Hollywood and blah blah blah but to go after San Diego to which has a huge military base I mean you you ride into you know San Diego and the first thing you see are those ships all lined up I mean it's so peculiar is this sort of I mean I actually did think not for the first time but this really is 25th Amendment territory there when you're calling for an enemy to invade two of your own cities as Karen Bass the mayor of Los Angeles said this is not what the president's supposed to do. No unfortunately though the 25th Amendment will never be in vote because it would require the cabinet secretaries all of whom are completely beholden to him they are his enablers and co-conspirators as much as anybody else in this government so that is not going to happen first of all secondly it just shows us I think where he's heading because what Donald often does is telegraph what he's thinking about doing and then with the idea of sort of floating floating it to see if it's going to fly right and he's often telling us what he's think actually thinking about doing and I don't think we can separate any of this from his very real concerns that the Republicans are going to get electorally annihilated in November which he doesn't care about except to the extent that that means he is going to be subject to impeachment and investigations and he will be I don't know if he's ever going to be held accountable but it is not going to be a good place for him to be in and he knows that that's where this may be tending and he's on the one hand trying to deny that by lying about how great things are right now and on the other hand making it clear that he may have to do something drastic if he actually thinks things aren't going to go well for him and I said this in 2020 and unfortunately it is much more true now than it was that if Donald thinks he's going down he will take all of us down with him well you've always maintained he's a nihilist he doesn't want anything to survive after him especially the Republican party let's come on to the midterms in a moment I wanted to ask you about this particular weave in a speech you highlighted this in your column I think you know where we're going with this but let's play this clip again for for anybody who hasn't heard this we have not edited this this is Donald Trump just speaking in real time on Saturday night in Ohio when I know more about inflation I know more about everything than anybody in this room anybody anywhere in the world well there's a woman sitting right over there that she's a housewife but she's very good she's got a natural instinct for business she perhaps knows more than I do but I actually don't think so what what what is he talking about I know more about everything than anybody in this room anybody anywhere in the world what Mary you're you're a clinical psychologist you understand what's going on inside Trump's head somewhere I go with Michael will three times a week what when he says he knows more about everything than anybody else in the world what is he actually projecting there I think more than I think he's trying to protect himself from the knowledge that the opposite is true right Donald has spent much if not all of his adult life or much of his psychic energy and his adult life to protect himself from the knowledge of who he is protect to make sure other people never find out who he really is and again find out you know that he keeps all of that unconscious because the truth about who he is would be so devastating to him psychically so the problem though is I think the barrier between his conscious sense which in his views that he's the greatest you know so more than everybody else and his unconscious knowledge is starting to erode a little bit and on the one hand it's it's another way in which things are escalating he used to say things like I know more about nuclear than anybody I know more about war than the generals and now that isn't enough to convince other people and himself that he's the most brilliant person to ever live now he has to say I know more about everything than everybody and the next what do you go from there I know more than anybody in all of history in the entire universe so like there's only so much more space this stuff can take up but it's another escalation I think of his insecurity and his terror that he is going to be revealed to be the exact opposite of what he's always pretended to be and I think that is terrifying for him but it's also terrifying for us because he will go to great legs to make sure that nobody ever finds out which is kind of funny because most of us know this of course he's just not aware of it yet and I think that's one of the things he's trying to protect himself from for sure if your accountant said I've never actually done taxes before but I'm pretty good at math you'd probably find someone who has done taxes because when something really matters experience isn't a bonus it's the whole point that's why so many people turn to Morgan and Morgan making it America's largest injury law firm Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people for over 35 years with over 35 billion recovered for their clients Morgan and Morgan knows a thing or two about fighting to get you the compensation you deserve they've got more than 1000 lawyers and a hundred offices nationwide so if your car gets totalled you get hurt at work or somebody else's bad decision becomes your very expensive problem you can check out Morgan and Morgan if you're ever injured you can check out Morgan and Morgan Morgan and Morgan fights to get their clients the best results and their fee is free unless they win to see if you have a case you can go to forthepeople.com/dailybeast so for example when you saw him last week with the all the tech founders around him so you had Mark Zuckerberg you had Dario Amadeu you had Sam Altman Elon Musk they're all around him I mean these are people that we think of as being very smart um what is going on it is Donald Trump getting some kind of reflected glory from their success and their it does he feel more powerful than them? Can you explain the dynamic that you think is going on there? - Yeah, I think it is partially reflective glory. It's also, it's a weird dynamic because on the one hand, all of those tech bro oligarch guys are laughing behind his back because they're using him to get what they want, right? They don't admire him, they probably don't even want to hang out with him, but they are making more money than they could ever possibly have dreamed of because he's so corrupt and so willing to dismantle any kinds of regulations that might have rained these people in. I think part of it too is that he is making this statement. I can command these people to be here, you know? I not only do I deserve to be among these smartest people on the planet, but I'm even smarter than they are. I'm more powerful than they are because I commanded them to be here, they are here. So I think again, it's another way of swaging his very, very fragile ego. And it displays like that that I think underscore how fragile his ego is and how insecure he is. And it's also a demonstration that he needs more and more and more. He needs to be surrounded by more rich, powerful people. He needs to have more things named after him on and on and on because the needs he has are never going to be filled. And he's starting to realize that all of these things that he's trying to use to fill that void of neediness aren't enough, but he's going to keep trying. - So this year he's met with Vladimir Putin. He's met with Xi Jinping, two men that he thinks of as sort of overlords, I suppose, strong men in his language. He's met with the leading tech guys in the world. What is the next for him? Where does he go from there? - That's a good question. Where is there to go from there? I think that we're just going to see more of the same, more concessions in exchange for more wealth perhaps. He's made it clear that he's for sale. He's made it clear that he's willing to appoint special envoys who have no connection to work, no legitimate connection to our government whatsoever. Like Gary Kushner, Steve Wykov, to make deals, make deals in the midst of a war. So these people can get richer at the expense of our earthwile ally, Ukraine. It's despicable, but it also just shows us what we all should have known along. There are no principles, there's no conscience, and there are no limits. So we've already heard him speaking favorably about North Korea many times, and now justifying North Korea's having nuclear weapons. Because he's so inept, and because he's so unself-aware, he still thinks that he's by being in a room with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, he says powerful and strong, and that there are no limits on his power, obviously that isn't true. He's also not nearly as smart as that of these people. So the default is going to be continuing to be played by them, making concessions to them at the expense of the American people while enriching himself and his crotes. Now, the problem is he will probably find out maybe, maybe he won't, I'm not sure, but it's likely he's going to find out, at some point, as I said earlier, that it's still not enough. And that need, that essential need he has, is never ever going to be filled. So I know it's very little consolation, but if there's any, it's knowing that he is the most miserable unhappy person on the plot. It's a small consolation matter. No, no. So let me ask you, I mean, Michael Wolfe has a very similar thread to you that this is a man who just must be the center of attention, that if he's not the center of attention for whatever reason, he can't stand it on one of the things, but one of the things he doesn't like and he can't see himself as is a loser. All the polls at the moment are pointing to the fact that the Republicans are going to do badly in the midterms. Now, I feel that I don't ever want to rely on polls because they've misled us in the past. Yeah, certainly what we're hearing, and I'm trying not to be in a total liberal media bubble is that the Democrats will take the House, and it's now very possible that the Senate is in play. How triggering is that, do you think, for your uncle? It's four weeks to go until the midterms is he in a sort of heightened state? What do you predict his state is right now? Oh, he's in an existential crisis right now. Little background, 'cause I think it's important to lay the groundwork for this conversation is said, Michael Wolfe is absolutely correct, that the thing Donald most reds is being seen as a loser, which is a circle because he's so obviously one. He is, and yet Mary is still president of the United States. It's a cruel irony, but it also happens to me. Nobody has failed up as spectacularly as this person. I mean, it is stunning, stunning. But this starts with his father, my grandfather, a four mentioned, so to say, a path, and the fact that my dad, who's the oldest son, just was never the right fit. For reasons I don't understand my grandfather just didn't like my father, who had every intention of taking over the family business. He was the namesake, he was the oldest son, but my grandfather just did like, my dad was funny, he was charming, he had great friendships, he also had interests, like he loved boating and fishing and being out at out east and he loved flying. He got his pilot's license in college. He was a member of the ROTC, he joined the National Guard. None of these things did my grandfather understand. So even though my dad worked very hard for him, he just wasn't the right guy. And it turns out that Donald was. And because my dad wasn't the right kind of person, he was considered a loser. Money wasn't the most important thing to him. He wanted to go fly and he just, he was kind and funny and gentle, what a loser. So Donald saw what my grandfather did to my father because he was a loser. He basically dismantled him, he destroyed him and ended up metaphorically speaking, killing him off. My dad died when he was 42 because of the cruel, unspeakable inhumane treatment he received from his father from Donald's father. Donald learned that lesson. So it is extremely, exessentially important for him, not to be seen as a loser. And we see this all the time with very simple things. He cannot even admit a mistake. I don't know if you remember recently, he was talking about the bomb sites, bomb factories in Iran, but he said drugs instead. But instead of saying, oh, I meant bombs. He actually made that part of the narrative as if Iran has drug factories and they're doing drugs while they're building bombs. I mean, it's just insane, but even course correcting to him means admitting you made a mistake and making mistake means you're a loser. Never admit you're wrong. That was another lesson my grandfather taught. So here we are. And he's faced with objective data, making it clear that his party is losing. He is the most unpopular president in modern history and Republicans are losing because of him. That is unacceptable. That is not information that he can process. So what does he do? He says the problem is that he's not on the ballot. So he wants Republicans to make this election about him. To which I say, yes, please do that. [LAUGHS] You said that in your column, and I laughed out loud. Oh, Flynn, you said that. It's so fascinating hearing you describe the family dynamic. What was the family dynamic like between Trump and his father, Donald Trump and your grandfather when you saw it? Well, how did they align themselves with each other? They were very much in sync. And one of the most fascinating things about it, and I mean, not that it was fascinating when I was a kid because it was just normal. But in retrospect, is the way that my grandfather treated Donald as an equal. And sometimes it was even deferential to him. Despite the fact that my grandfather knew that Donald wasn't a good businessman at all, but my grandfather was. But Donald-- was a good messenger. I say what you will about him. He was a media savvy. He grew up in the television age and, you know, he knew how to manipulate the media. So that is the quality my grandfather wanted because my grandfather had none of those skills whatsoever. And he would take care of the business. So it was almost like they had their own language. All of our family meals were centered around the conversations they were having. And the rest of us were bit players. Or as I said, once, you know, we were just in the cheap seats while they played their games. So it was, wasn't, when my grandfather got older, however, that, or I should say when Donald started getting older, and he started having a taste of some very unearned success, but success nonetheless, he built, I mean, the high it, the Grandtiet, New York, Trump Tower. And he decided that he wanted to go to Atlantic City. And my grandfather said, don't do it. It's not, that is not a good move. And Donald didn't listen to him. And as we know, it was not a good move because he bankrupted three casinos. But it just showed you that Donald had grown my grandfather because he thought he didn't need him anymore. Of course, he did. He certainly needed his money. And then as my grandfather got Alzheimer's, Donald had no use from whatsoever. And here's, I mean, it's very, it's very ironic because I'm not saying Donald has Alzheimer's, but clearly he is incognitive decline. And when my grandfather was incognitive decline, Donald treated him like dirt. He didn't want to have anything to do with him. He had no patience for him. He was unkind to him. And now here's Donald, having a fewer and fewer people willing to give him this courtesy, he refused to give my grandfather. And it's as if the pigeons are coming home to risk. It's if pigeons are chickens. I don't know, somebody's coming home to risk. Yeah, someone's, I think it's chickens, but who knows? They've healthier looking hat and skin have been on your mind. This is the sign to stop putting it off. I received the Irish store Elite and Illumina face mask. And what I love is how easily they fit into your routine. The Elite is comfortable enough to wear while working or watching TV. And it uses 300 lasers and 200 LEDs to help regrow thicker, healthier hair. And the Illumina is lightweight. It's cordless and it takes just 10 minutes. 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Was this sense in which Donald Trump said about Natalie, she'll never leave me. The others will leave me. They'll all be gone. Natalie will never leave me. Is that do you think I'm just putting the two together with you saying that he treated his father horribly? He had no use for him once his father had Alzheimer's. He had no use for him. Do you think that's a reflection of him saying that of his fear of abandonment knowing that he abandoned his own father? Every single relationship Donald has is transactional and I think it should become obvious to him that his children don't care about him anymore than he cares about them. And, you know, those relationships are determined purely by who's getting what out of whom. So we've also seen cracks in the inner circle. Caroline Leavitt was clearly one of the most loyal, psychophantic and disgraceful propagandists in the administration. She was willing to live for him. She was as rude and disrespectful as he was at the ripe old age of 27. But even she had limits because he was willing to get her killed on Air Force One. Like Caroline Leavitt did not get an invitation to come on the catering car with him. And I think we see that in other people too. You know, there are limits when people are psychophantic enablers. Even they have limits to the amount they are willing to be humiliated or have their lives in danger. Natalie Harper is a different type entirely. There's something seriously wrong with her. You know, I think there's something psychologically wrong with her. She needs help. And it's the only case I've ever seen in which the stalking victim has welcomed the being stalked. And I think that is in part because Donald is not getting the attention he needs because nobody cares about him, which makes sense, because he doesn't care about anybody. And she's willing to fill that role. And it is inappropriate. It's wrong. I think he's taking advantage. But nobody seems to have a problem with it. Republican, if a Democrat did this, a Democratic president with an 81-year-old Democrat president was hanging out with a 35-year-old woman and spending more time with her than he did with anybody else in his family, I'm pretty sure there would be a problem. But this is a different world we live in now. And Mary, what do you make of Natalie Harper's friend Laura Luma, who's come on and off the scene, but seems to enjoy flying around with the president and claims to be an advisor to him. And he's always acknowledged, well, he frequently acknowledges her and says how helpful she is. I think she's just very skilled at inserting herself. I find her vile. She's an Islamophobic racist opportunist. But for whatever reason, you know, well, I guess that's in certain circles in this country now in our government. That's a good thing. You know, those are qualifications, if you want access to the inner circle. So I'm sure she's very good at flattering him and making him feel special and valued, which is the only way anybody lasts to the extent people last, is if they are the things I just mentioned, but also subservient. Because obviously, as we've seen, as woman after woman, in a position of authority has been let go. If you're a woman who wants to stay in Donald's good graces, you have to be subservient in addition to everything else. Is this what happened with your grandfather? I was going to ask you, what was your grandfather's relationships with women? He was a misogynist. He treated my grandmother like a second class citizen. He wasn't particularly interested in his, he had two daughters. They certainly were treated differently. Like my Aunt Marianne was the oldest and there was no, and I mean, this was this was not unique to my grandfather. This wouldn't have happened in the 40s anyway, but it was never, never thought that she would be take over the cup, the family business. And in fact, she became a federal judge. And when he went to her swear again, the only thing he said to her was, well, at least now you'll have good benefits. Was he a woman, Isa? He actually had an affair, a long-standing affair with his secretary, who, by the way, was my godmother. Wow, how did that come about? I don't know. Thankfully, I was not aware at the time. I was just a tiny child and I knew I didn't know any of this, but I guess just proximity, they worked together for like five or six decades. And she was married to and it just, I guess it was a, it was a matter of convenience, whether or not he had other affairs, I wouldn't be surprised because this is the guy who walked around with a picture, a wallet-sized picture in his wallet, of a half-naked woman, which he would pull out and show to me once in a while, which I found mortifying because I was 10 and he found hysterical. So, you know, he was, he was not a, he was not a good guy. It's fascinating. So, I wanted to ask you two about well, we have another clip here that we have. want to play and I want to get your feedback because I wondered if this, this way it's the aspirin clip and I wondered if this was based on family law that you take a lot of aspirin because some families have weird medical traditions. Let's, let's play the clip. I love bare aspirin, I take an aspirin a day. I don't know if it works but psychologically I need it. Is that something that your family did. I mean, actually my grandmother always used to take an aspirin. My maternal grandmother used to take an aspirin a day and told me I would when I was older and I'm like, yeah, probably not. But, but, but what did you think when you heard that? I think psychologically he really does need something but probably not bare aspirin. It also makes me think that he owns stock in bare aspirin because now that stock is going to go up. But, no, as far as I'm aware, there's no family law about taking an aspirin. Oh, then for what Andrew said, I think it is some, it is protocol for people. I think he takes blood thinner or something. Yeah, I think the issue is he takes four times the recommended dose because he wants thin blood going through his heart. That's, that's what he explains it as but I wasn't sure if there was a, you know, an anxiety in the Trump family that the blood was particularly thick. Well, I think, I mean, something's thick but it's, it's not as blood necessarily. But I think what he's doing is similar to what he does when he brags about his cognitive tests, right? He's signaling that he's concerned and he's signaling that there are problems. Nobody in that white house is going to tell us the truth about his health but we know it isn't good. We know that he has serious cognitive issues and he on some level knows it too because he talks about these things in ways that with a normal person would be a cause for concern. If a doctor told me that I needed to take a basic cognitive assessment four times, I would think, oh, that must mean something's wrong because that's always what that means. Or they want to screen out for, they want to screen you for what potential problems. Same thing, you don't take four times a recommended dose, you don't think as aspirin, if there's an issue, right? I mean, unless it's preventive, I don't know. But if you don't take four times that amount if everything's fine and you certainly don't ramble on and on about it. One, because it's not interesting. And two, you're telling people that there's a problem and his goal is to make sure that people don't think there are any problems. So he's completely failing to do that in the way he used to be able to. That's fascinating. There's another, I think projection that's going on here. Today we read that he was obsessed about the New York Times usage of pictures of his Derral Golf Club that he thought that they'd been using pictures that deliberately showed it looking in a decrepit state that there was flaking paint, that it wasn't pristine and white, which is what he says it is. And I wondered also if that was some kind of projection. What's your take on that? Oh, gosh, yes. Absolutely. Decrepit, paint flaking. I mean, it sounds like he's looking in the mirror when he says these things. And I think it's also because the things are finally starting to stack up. And we've talked about this before. One of the most infuriating things about him is that nothing, none of the crises, none of the horrors had ever been additive. It's like he does one terrible thing and then it gets forgotten when the next terrible thing is not. It's like that doesn't that doesn't happen for any other human except him. But now it's starting to stack up and he is losing control of the narrative. So when he sees a documentary evidence of a problem that he can't solve or he can't convince people doesn't exist, it does feel personal because it is. So it's just another kind of way it's another tell. It's another tell. And what is the tell you think? I mean, I guess it's sort of obvious, but I'm curious to get your point of view on his insistence on singling out CNN and MS now and Politico refusing them access to the pool. Why them specifically and what is he trying to do there? I think that specifically them because they remain among the only corporate media outlets that present objective fact and don't toe the line in the way that he has by, you know, allowing mergers and dismantling regulations has kind of manipulated CBS and all of these other outlets to be state-run media at this point. So I think he has a personal animus towards those two outlets. And it also just shows you how increasingly incapable he is of being presented with any objective facts that clash with his delusions. I mean, these are the delusions. A guy who can say, if you tell me the polls are bad for me, you're fake. We're talking about objective data here. These are just numbers. They can't be, you know, they can be presented and they can be analyzed, but they are numbers. So he can't even, he can't handle that. He can't handle being told that he said one thing about mail-in voting and now he's saying another thing about mail-in voting. So these are the delusions of a guy who's so isolated with his own echo chamber that he cannot distinguish between reality and the stories he tells himself and because the reality is clashing with what he needs to believe about himself, it is reality that has to be attacked. And people's belief in that reality has to be underbunded. And can you talk a little bit about the settlement that was reached this summer between you and Donald Trump about his leaked tax records? Yes, first of all, I don't know why this was allowed to go on for four years because I have never had Donald Trump's taxes. The taxes he's referring to were, I got access to them when I sued my family back in 2000 because I had been just inherited by my grandfather and then I found out, well, at the time, I was given the tax records, my grandparents taxes and the taxes of every single property my grandfather owned for purposes of assessing their value. I never had Donald Trump's tax records in my entire life. Why would I? He's my uncle. So that's what was the basis of, I mean, that was also because I was not, he said that writing my book broken NDA and a few other things. So he sued me for $100 million and after four years, he got a handwritten note that cost him about $500,000 a word. So this was the handwritten note for me. Yes, I had so yes, that's a good, that's a good detail, a handwritten note for me, which said very little and I didn't apologize for anything and I didn't take anything back. And that was the end of it. So that was his great victory after four years of suing me for $100 million, which as you could imagine was not the most pleasant thing to have to deal with. So well, and a waste of everybody's time, yours and his, but this is his standard, this is his standard operation. Well, I'm glad the case has come to an end. I mean, must be very odd for you to a hear your uncle's name every day, but be, you know, it feels like it would be the fantasy to have one's uncle as president of the United States unless the president turns out to be Donald Trump. Well, if you don't have any standards, yes, it would be awesome. Um, yeah, I have got to, I, I, uh, I'm sort of used to it by now, it's, it's the dealing with us for 10 years. And I don't even feel like I'm related to these people anymore because they are so beyond the pale. Um, I feel no affinity with them, thankfully. And I used to have this theory, which I'm beginning to think is actually what happened. I think I was born under a rock. Well, marriage from, you've emerged from under that rock with your sense of humor intact, uh, and, uh, a fascinating analysis of your uncle, which of course your clinical psychology background, uh, gives you the training to articulate for us. Thank you so much for joining us and I hope you will come back the minute the midterms are resolved. and you can tell us how you think he's going to cope with the next couple of years. - Absolutely, Joanna, thank you so much. This was wonderful. (upbeat music) - Oh, there was so much about that conversation I really enjoyed, not least Mary's very dry sense of humor. And her real ability to articulate what's going on psychologically, what her uncle finds triggering the family lineage, the strange psychological lock that that family had and the terrible story of her father just not fitting in and his father just opened me despising him and thinking him a loser and of course his early death at 42. Anyway, we'll have Mary back after the midterms, but right and tell us your comments as you know, we love your comments. I'd love to know what you think is most moving and what triggered you from Mary's conversations about the president. So if you have been, thank you so much for joining us. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Pasa, Heather Pissaro and Neil Rosenhouse. So the good news is we have so many bee-beast tear members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.