These revelations from Mary Trump’s new memoir help explain why Uncle Donald sued to silence her

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• These revelations from Mary Trump’s new memoir help explain why Uncle Donald sued to silence her
• 
  Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump has a new tell-all book that Donald Trump is attempting to block. He is attempting to block the book’s publication because Mary Trump does not like her uncle and the tell-all book is filled with nothing but bones from a grotesque man’s closet. The book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, is described by the publisher as “revelatory,” though to whom Donald Trump is a pathetic weakling of a person, who is cruel, narcissistic, and incompetent is revelatory remains to be seen.

  Needless to say, there is something not exactly satisfying or reassuring about knowing that no, you are not wrong, the president of the United States is exactly the kind of rich kid failure of a human being you think he is. This is no small thing as there are times that this man’s incompetence and cruelty seems so banal that one wonders if they aren’t just in some poorly written spoof film. But, sadly, we are not. As we reach the end of Trump’s first term in office and find ourselves living as extras in a bad 1990s action film, Mary Trump’s book gives some details of her uncle’s lack of integrity and offers up some dark things to laugh/cry about.
  The book’s release date is set for July 14, but The New York Times was able to get its hands on the memoir a little earlier. Mary Trump, who is estranged from her uncle and reportedly signed a nondisclosure agreement in connection with a settlement over her grandfather’s (Fred Trump) will seems to be ready to drag out a lot of skeletons from the Trump family walk-in closet, nondisclosure agreement or not.

  Here’s a fun one: Trump cheated on his SATs in order to get into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school. I mean, we all sort of assumed that if Trump somehow had high marks—standardized testing or otherwise—it was related to money. One of Trump’s former professors at Wharton, William T. Kelley said that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” Listen, I’m not a fan of standardized testing. I think SATs and the like are poor ways of showing little more than how well one can handle a standardized test. That being said, I also believe bragging about one’s excellence based on things you haven’t done to be a terrible trait.

  Mary Trump dishes on the Fred Trump-driven family ethos of “cheating as a way of life,” and looking at the rest of humanity as monetary pieces. There are stories of Trump and his family sending off the wayward alcohol-addicted son, Donald’s older brother Fred Jr., to the hospital alone on the night he died from a heart attack. Fred Jr., Mary’s father, died at the age of 42. Trump’s niece clearly feels that her grandfather’s anger toward her father over not choosing the family business led in part to his demise as well as a lack of care when he needed it most. In fact, Mary writes that Donald went to the movies the night of his older brother’s death.

  

  Of course, the true nature of those relationships is hard to know or judge, but what can be judged in Mary’s opinion is Donald’s ability to be successful with his father, Fred, who if you don’t know was a terror of a human being by most every account. According to Mary Trump, Donald’s success was simply based on the fact that he was mediocre enough, and sociopathic enough to fit into his father’s  plans. "The only reason Donald escaped the same fate is that his personality served his father's purpose. That's what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends—ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance.”

  Mary Trump, who is an actual clinical psychologist, also explains that while her uncle has all of the clinical traits of someone with narcissist personality disorder, he is even more troubled than that, and a comprehensive breakdown of his mental health landscape would be virtually impossible to achieve. Needless to say, Mary Trump writes what we all know to be true, without money and a corrupt and rigged system, someone like Donald Trump would likely be in a situation that required lots of professional and government-aided help: “Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”

  The most important issue facing Donald is that his entire life has been a fake news myth-making endeavor. He’s been a terrible businessman, a terrible “ladies man,” a crap parent, a boring talk show host, and now a truly incompetent and dangerous world leader. What Mary Trump’s book does more than anything is remind Trump of his mediocrity, and it hits Trump in the place that hurts him the most—the public’s imagination.

  The most important issue facing the United States—if not the world—is also contained in this tell-all tome: we live in a world that not only is not a meritocracy, but it is designed to allow terrible people to rise into outrageous positions of power, with little to no oversight and zero justice. It is a story of our country’s well-known, but not spoken about, caste system, created by income inequality and our current economic and health crisis is the proof-positive of how few people for which this system works. When the going gets tough, the rich and people like Trump buy their way forward at the expense of hundreds, thousands, and millions of other people’s lives.
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• Vandal paints over Black Lives Matter mural while man she's with claims racism is 'leftist lie'
• 
• In a demonstration of white privilege, a woman was shown in a viral video painting over a city-approved Black Lives Matter mural while the man she was with shouted about leftist delusions. Unluckily for the couple, however, California police have taken notice and sent out scene photos and links to the video in search of the pair.

  The incident unfolded after community members obtained a permit to paint the mural on the Fourth of July in downtown Martinez, which is about 35 miles northeast of San Francisco. Soon after the mural was completed, the unidentified woman could be seen rolling black paint onto the yellow artwork. The man with her appeared to be filming when a bystander asked: “What is wrong with you?” He explained that he and the woman he was with are sick of the narrative of police brutality, oppression, and racism. “It’s a lie,” he said. 

  Wednesday, Jul 8, 2020 · 9:44:51 AM EDT · Lauren Floyd

  Nicole Anderson, 42, and David Nelson, 53, have been charged with three misdemeanor counts, including a hate crime in the incident, the Contra Costa County District Attorney said in a news release Tuesday. They are accused of violating civil rights, vandalism under $400, and possession of tools to commit vandalism or graffiti.

  “We must address the root and byproduct of systemic racism in our country. The Black Lives Matter movement is an important civil rights cause that deserves all of our attention,” Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said in a news release. “The mural completed last weekend was a peaceful and powerful way to communicate the importance of Black lives in Contra Costa County and the country. We must continue to elevate discussions and actually listen to one another in an effort to heal our community and country.”
  “There is no oppression,” he later added. “There is no racism. It’s a leftist lie.” The bystander then responded: “You can’t be that stupid, can you?” And at one point in the exchange, the woman painting said in an outburst: “Keep this s--t in f-----g New York. This is not happening in my town.”

  The woman continues painting over the mural despite calls from bystanders to stop, and at one point she is shown asking the man she is with to get more paint. “I got plenty,” she said.

  Martinez police released a photo of a Nissan pickup truck the couple was spotted in. It had the name "NICOLE" on the back of it and the license plate 52701B1. “It appeared that the couple came to the mural with cans of paint and a roller with the specific purpose of vandalizing over the mural,” police said in the news release. “The community spent a considerable amount of time painting this mural only to have the suspects destroy it by dumping and rolling paint over part of the message.”

  Although disheartening, it’s not the first time suspects have been accused of vandalizing a Black Lives Matter sign in California. Workers from a sheriff's office and district attorney's office in southern California were among those shown on security camera footage vandalizing a "BLM" sign on a homeowner's fence in Thousand Oaks in June, CNN reported. Three suspects were later arrested and identified as Darrin Stone, Craig Anderson, and Jeffrey Moore, according to a news release from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. “Anderson is a non-sworn investigative assistant at the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office,” authorities said in the news release.

  Stone, a service technician at a pretrial detention facility, has worked with the sheriff’s office since 2005 but was reportedly off duty when he was seen vandalizing the sign. He was caught on camera slashing it with a knife on June 13, and he was accused of slashing it a second time on June 19, authorities said. “In addition to being cited for vandalism, Stone has been placed on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of both criminal and administrative investigations,” the sheriff’s office said.

  Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub added: “I’m deeply disappointed that one of our employees involved himself in this type of illegal activity, especially when this is an infringement on someone’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech. We will not tolerate unlawful or unethical behavior by anyone employed by our agency. We hold our employees to the highest standards, and there will be consequences for this.”

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• How did Trump manage to cram so much racism, stupidity, and lying into a single tweet?
• 
  It was Monday, the nation’s sun belt was exploding with new coronavirus cases, the president’s poll numbers were in the dumpster, and Republican consultants were freaking out about their numbers in the suburbs (for good reason). And what did Donald Trump decide to focus on? 

  In one fell swoop, Trump displayed everything that is leading him to a historic November defeat: racism, lies, stupidity, and a breathtaking inability to read a room.
  1) Lies

  The NASCAR noose incident wasn’t a hoax. It happened. There was a noose—the FBI merely determined that it wasn’t a federal crime. 

  Their reasoning is that the noose in question has been in the garage since Oct. 14, 2019, and that nobody outside of NASCAR officials could have known Wallace would have been assigned that garage until a few days before Sunday's race at Talladega, which was ultimately rained out and ran on Monday.

  Furthermore, NASCAR hasn’t suffered its lowest ratings ever. Here is Fox Sports’ head of strategy:

  In fact, “every NASCAR race on Fox since the Confederate flag ban, except for Talladega on June 22, has rated higher than the equivalent race the year before,” reported Yahoo Finance.

  2. Stupidity

  There is no reason for Bubba Wallace, the circuit’s lone Black driver, to apologize to anyone. He didn’t report the noose. He never even saw it. It was found by a team member who reported it to NASCAR, which immediately sprung into action by bringing the FBI to investigate. Wallace was literally a bystander while all this was taking place. So why would Trump turn his ire toward Wallace? Because of …

  3. Racism

  Wallace is Black, and … that’s it. He’s Black. And Trump reserves his greatest ire for Black athletes. He has demanded “get that son of a bitch off the field” of football players kneeling in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, has bragged that he’s “the reason [Colin] Kaepernick has no job,” tweets shit like this: 

  … and the list goes on. So Wallace was in sports news at a time of racial justice protests, and Trump couldn’t contain himself. He wanted to brag about how he chased Wallace from the sport of racing, just as he bragged about destroying Kaepernick’s career. 

  That’s rich coming from a guy crying about “cancel culture.”

  Of course, since this is Donald Trump, there was even more racism in that single tweet, attacking NASCAR’s “Flag decision” to ban the Confederate traitor flag from its events. 

  Now why has Trump decided to bet it all on the traitor flag and statues of traitor generals? That’s certainly not going to win back the suburban college-educated white women who are crushing Republicans nationwide. Quite the opposite, in fact—it’s confirming every concern about his judgement and his racism. The only possible reason? He sees his racist supporters waving that racist flag, and he sees it as yet another way to reward his core, shrinking base. 

  And that leads to,

  4. A breathtaking inability to read the room.

  There’s the political electoral calculation, of course, with majority support for Black Lives Matter in all the battleground states: 

  Trump is so racist, so furious at the notion of Black equality, that he’s decided to align himself with the fringe deplorable retrogrades.

  Of course, the White House political operation can do the math and recognizes the danger it poses to his (and his party’s) electoral chances. So they struggle to mitigate the damage. Here’s White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany struggling to wave away Trump’s support for the Confederate flag:

  REPORTER: "What is the president's position? Does he think NASCAR made a mistake by banning the Confederate flag?"

  MCENANY: "I spoke to him this morning about this and he said he was not making a judgment one way or the other. The intent of the tweet was to stand up for the men and women of NASCAR, the fans and those who have gone in this rush to judgment of the media to call something a hate crime when in fact the FBI report concluded this was not an intentional racist act. It very much mirrors other times where there's been a rush to judgment, let's say with the Covington boys or with Jussie Smollett."

  REPORTER: "Let's drill down on the Confederate flag. Does he think it was a mistake for NASCAR to ban it?"

  MCENANY: "The president said he wasn't making a judgment one way or the other. You're focusing on one word at the very bottom of the tweet that's completely taken out of context and neglecting the complete rush to judgment."

  

  “Out of context!” “Just one word!” But of course, words matter, the context is clear and obvious, and the White House knows that embracing and defending the traitor flag in this climate isn’t just electoral suicide—it makes them social pariahs. 

  NASCAR itself wasn’t particularly appreciative of Trump’s tweet, and the circuit and its drivers have rallied around Wallace (with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but baby steps). Ultimately, it is Trump, again, who is relegated to the fringes. 

  It is obvious that no one can control Trump, that he is his own campaign manager and message crafter, and everyone else around him exists merely to clean up his messes. 

  It’s his gut that is in charge, and his gut is 100% racist, through and through. 
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