It was insightful to learn just how dysfunctional the entire Trump family was. It was like the real life version of There Will Be Blood. And Trump’s father was the ruthless oil man.
According to his niece, Trump’s father was a miserly person and the only thing he lacked was fame. So he kept pumping money into Donald’s terrible investments to make them seem like successes that the media could report on. But it was all kind of like a pyramid scheme. There was no sound numbers behind any of it. No talent or merit.
It has all been smoke and mirrors and media manipulation. She alleges that Donald is a total sham and the only success he has ever had was actually his dad surrounding him with competent people. (And I guess basically giving Donald one of those fake steering wheel toys you give to kids so they can pretend they are steering the car hahahaha! ) Funny as that sounds, I don’t believe it to be logistically possible. Therefore I support the book for the psychological analysis and family history, but not for the business speculation.
If you like learning about other people’s family drama it’s an excellent book. It is insightful and easy to read. After every line, I had a feeling like, “Ah, that makes sense.” Over and over. “Ah, that makes sense.” That’s how I would describe the feel of this book. It goes a long way to describe Trump’s temperament.
However, I have one critique. I think the author’s political commentary near the end misses the mark. She blames Trump for too many things that he’s not actually responsible for. The condemnation of his presidency sounds edgy, but it’s not entirely truthful. Luckily her commentary amounted to only a few paragraphs.
Trump is a person like anyone else, and his team has accomplished some amazing things during his presidency. The alleged narcissistic personality disorder is not a disability. He may be overly focused on getting attention, but that actually motivates him to do good things for that attention. If only people were more willing to work with this tendency rather than fight against it and complain, we could accomplish even more. The ultimate failing is not with Trump, but with the people who are too shortsighted to work with the president they’ve been given but didn’t ask for, with respect to the personality that he was given but didn’t ask for.
All that being said, this was an amazing book, and I recommend anyone read it for the psychology insight, regardless of their political affiliation.