Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump walks off after speaking at a campaign rally, July 27, in St. Cloud, Minn.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
Donald Trump is a vindictive man who poses a threat to the constitutional underpinnings of the United States, including the limits it places on presidential terms, his nephew is warning.
For a man whose life has been haunted by a fear of losing, the results of the 2020 election stung deeply, transforming him into a dangerous candidate who, four years later, is eager to settle scores, Fred C. Trump III, the former president’s nephew, said Tuesday.
“He is a vengeful person, and he will follow through” on threats to exact retribution, Mr. Trump said in an interview.
He spoke with The Globe and Mail on the day his new book, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, went on sale. Mr. Trump, a long-time Democratic Party voter, has endorsed Kamala Harris for president.
He worries that his uncle will refuse to relinquish the White House if he is successful in winning a return to office in this November’s election. The U.S. Constitution constrains presidents to two terms. But Donald Trump is “fully capable of moving forward with anything that will keep him in office,” Mr. Trump said.
“I don’t know the mechanism he would use,” he added. But “I think everyone should be fearful of that.”
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When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, he did so as an outsider to a political apparatus that maintained considerable influence. Eight years later, he has largely sculpted the Republican Party in his own image, installing his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair of the Republican National Committee and making himself a kingmaker in the selection of candidates across the country.
“Do I fear for democracy and freedoms that we have now? Yeah I do,” his nephew said. “It’s not hyperbole. He has surrounded himself with just very dangerous people with dangerous thoughts.” The establishment leaders who occupied president Trump’s cabinet and advisory ranks during his first term are gone – and those now at Donald Trump’s side “are going to let him run free,” Mr. Trump said.
Fred C. Trump III, Donald Trump's nephew.Simon & Schuster/Supplied
In his book, Mr. Trump recounts the story of his turbulent life in a family that built itself from German immigrant roots, to immense wealth in the biggest U.S. metropolis, to occupying a place at the pinnacle of the country’s power.
He also offers a new look at the formative family forces that created a president who has arguably become the most important figure in modern U.S. politics.
Mr. Trump comes from a branch of the family that has for decades been kept at a distance from its core business decisions – and profits. His father, the charismatic and free-spirited Fred Trump, Jr., had little interest in Trump real estate affairs, but his chosen career as a pilot ended quickly because of his inability to stop drinking. He died at 42 of a heart attack linked to alcoholism, leaving Mr. Trump, his sister and his mother as second-tier members of their own extended family.
Years later, Mr. Trump discovered that he had been effectively cut off from his grandfather’s wealth soon after his son, William, was born with severe disabilities. A highly publicized legal challenge of the will unearthed documentation suggesting Donald Trump helped to orchestrate the disinheritance to secure more cash for himself at a time his businesses were struggling.
Mr. Trump eventually secured some share of the family money – he says legal strictures bar him from saying how much – and he maintained a relationship with Donald Trump that extended to his time in the White House.
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But the bruises of being ostracized have endured.
In 2020, Mr. Trump’s sister, Mary L. Trump, released a scorching book entitled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. A psychologist, Ms. Trump declares Donald Trump unfit for office and catalogues instances of open prejudice in the family, beyond the housing discrimination that brought a federal suit against the family business.
Mr. Trump, in his new book, says the man who became president showed open disdain for Blacks and people with disabilities. When Donald Trump discovered gashes in the canvas roof of his car, a convertible Cadillac Eldorado in cotillion white, his response was to use a deeply offensive racial slur twice to blame the Black people he believed responsible, without any evidence of who was culpable.
Donald Trump has rejected such allegations, saying he does not “have that word in my vocabulary, and never have.” In a statement to ABC News this week, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the former president does not use such language. “This is completely fabricated and total fake news of the highest order,” he said.
Simon & Schuster/Supplied
Fred C. Trump said he needed no notes to remember what he heard, adding that his uncle’s disparagement of vulnerable groups continued into the Oval Office.
His son, William Trump, was born with a genetic mutation that wracked his infant body with as many as a hundred seizures a day. Now 25, William cannot speak, walk or feed himself.
The immensity of the cost and complexity of caring for William forms a central thread in Mr. Trump’s relationship with the family whose name he bears.
For many years, Donald Trump and his siblings contributed to a medical fund for William. Only Donald, in fact, was consistent with his contributions.
Still, when funds began to run low, Mr. Trump turned to his uncle. “I don’t know,” Mr. Trump recalls his uncle responding. “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”
William did recognize his father. But it was the second time Donald Trump had made such a comment. The first came in the Oval Office, after Mr. Trump arranged a meeting to advocate for better policies toward people with disabilities.
“Those people,” president Trump said. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”
Mr. Trump, who wrote the book in part to draw greater attention to the needs of people with disabilities, said the medical fund only has cash left for a few more months. He hopes Donald Trump will once again contribute to care for his grandnephew.
“We’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “We hope they will be reasonable.”