Louisiana Voice

By Stephen Winham, guest columnist

If you’ve not read this currently best-selling of the books about President Trump and you are expecting it to be what I was expecting, I would suggest you read the Prologue, Chapter 14, and the Epilogue first.  The rest of the book provides context, to a certain extent, but consists mostly of insights into how the wealthy perceive slights, with an emphasis on the wrongs visited on the author’s father and, subsequent to his death, the rest of her immediate family.

If you are looking for surprises, you will probably be disappointed.  I did find validation for what I believed about President Trump in the segments I recommend you read first, and I found the memoir that comprises the remainder of the book well worth the read.

The book is subtitled, “How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”  Ms. Trump holds a doctorate in clinical psychology.  It is clear she leans toward nurture versus nature in her assessment of what makes her Uncle Donald the person he is.  She lays the blame squarely on his father, Fred Trump, who she says raised Donald to be The Donald.

Despite the fact the author’s father, Freddie, was the patriarch’s first-born and namesake, Fred chose Donald to be his anointed one and seems to have lived vicariously through his “success.”

[Warning:  There are many people with the same names in this book and it is sometimes hard to keep them straight – at least it was for me.]

President Trump’s father might well have remained in Germany had his father (another Fred) not been kicked out of Germany when he returned there after having left to avoid the draft.  Although he amassed a considerable fortune in the Klondike (as a restaurateur and brothel owner), he apparently did not leave Fred and his mother, Elizabeth,  truly rich when he perished from flu during the great epidemic of 1918 and Donald’s father worked in a variety of jobs before he and his mother began what became a true real estate empire.

In discussing her family history, the author focuses on how shabbily her father was treated in life and the rest of her family was treated after his death by the rest of the Trump family.  Her reported interactions with President Trump seem superficial.  According to her, Donald wanted to cut everybody out of the empire, but ultimately only she and her brother were cut off from her Grandfather’s fortune.

Fred Trump revised his will after the author’s father died, leaving her immediate family completely out.  This, as it turns out, was not quite as bad as it seems since she and every other member of her generation of the family apparently have substantial ownership in the family fortune that continues despite not getting a bequeath from the estate.  Like everything else about Trump family finances, the estimated size of that estate varies widely, as does each family member’s wealth.

The other Trump books seem boringly similar and I no longer have interest in reading them.  This one is worth reading because of the family dynamics and the things the super wealthy find to complain about while living extravagantly, but re-gifting trinkets at Christmas time.  I think her book would have been much more valuable had she spent more time on this. She does briefly talk about Donald Trump’s financial shenanigans, but we learn nothing we had not already read in the newspaper.

(Stephen Winham is the retired Director of the Louisiana Executive Budget Office, having service in that office since 1979 and as Director from 1988 to 2000.)