Donald Trump’s niece has said she was “devastated” by her uncle’s rise to power in 2016, and that foresaw his administration being “unspeakably awful”.
Mary Trump, a psychologist and writer, called the current US president “pathetic”, as she warned that he had “never evolved” from the man she knew growing up as a child.
She sat down with BBC journalist Samira Ahmed to discuss the rise of her uncleat the Hay Festival in Wales on Tuesday, which The Independent is once again partnering with.
Describing her response to her uncle’s first election win, she said: “I handled the 2016 election badly. I was devastated by it. I took it really personally because I felt like the worst person on the planet was being elevated at the expense of better people.
“How I responded to the election prefigured how I responded to everything else [later in his term] because I knew it was going to be unspeakably awful.
“And I saw the specific policies and the ways in which those policies were designed to be cruel and to have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable people in the country.”
She added: “One of the reasons I took 2016 personally is because it felt like millions had voted to turn America into my family - which is a terrible idea.”
She also spoke about the need for opponents to her uncle to organise together: “My point of view is that I don't understand people who are afraid of Donald, because he's so pathetic. Seriously, I would be embarrassed to be afraid him.
“But it is his supporters and followers - who are willing to lay down their life for him and to make acts of violence on his behalf - who are the more worrisome group of people.”
Ms Trump also spoke on Monday evening at the festival, on a panel alongside Baroness Rosie Boycott, Baroness Eluned Morgan, the first minister of Wales and leading US journalist McKay Coppins.
Responding to Mr Coppins describing the US president’s “visceral anger” at elites because “Manhattan’s senate aristocracy always kind of laughed at him,” Ms Trump said: “Donald is one of the most aggrieved people on the planet.
“And he feels like those grievances are legitimate. It goes deeper, but we see how it’s playing out on institutions of higher learning. He’s very insecure.”
Ms Trump went on to say that his grievances went “even deeper”, explaining how he watched his father, Fred Trump, “dismantle” his “charming, funny, sensitive” older brother, Fred Trump Jr.
“His fear does stem from having witnessed what happened to my dad. The eldest son, who was supposed to be the heir to the Trump empire, who is deemed unworthy by their father,” she said.
Hay Festival, which is spread over 11 days, is set in Hay-on-Wye, the idyllic and picturesque “Town of Books”. The lineup includes Salman Rushdie, Michael Sheen, Jameela Jamil, and more.
The Independent has partnered with the festival once again to host a series of morning panels titled The News Review, where our journalists will explore current affairs with leading figures from politics, science, the arts and comedy every morning.
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