Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man

After Rob’s remarks, Donald shot him the same dismissive look I’d seen at Peter Luger’s almost twenty years before. Then, Diet Coke glass in hand, Donald made some perfunctory remarks about my aunts’ birthdays, after which he gestured toward his daughter-in-law. “Lara, there,” he said. “I barely even knew who the fuck she was, honestly, but then she gave a great speech during the campaign in Georgia supporting me.” By then, Lara and Eric had been together for almost eight years, so presumably Donald had at least met her at their wedding. But it sounded as if he hadn’t known who she was until she had said something nice about him at a campaign rally during the election. As usual with Donald, the story mattered more than the truth, which was easily sacrificed, especially if a lie made the story sound better.

When Maryanne’s turn came, she said, “I want to thank you for making the trip to celebrate our birthdays. We’ve come a long way since that night when Freddy dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head because he was being such a brat.” Everybody familiar with the legendary mashed potato story laughed—everyone except Donald, who listened with his arms tightly crossed and a scowl on his face, as he did whenever Maryanne mentioned it. It upset him, as if he were that seven-year-old boy. He clearly still felt the sting of that long-ago humiliation.

Unprompted, my cousin Donny, who’d returned from chasing down Jared, stood up to speak. Instead of toasting our aunts, he gave a sort of campaign speech. “Last November, the American people saw something special and voted for a president who they knew understood them. They saw what a great family this is, and they connected with our values.” I glanced at my brother and rolled my eyes.

I flagged down one of the waiters. “Can I have some more wine?” I asked.

He returned quickly with two bottles and asked if I preferred red or white.

“Yes, please,” I said.

As soon as we finished dessert, everybody rose. Only two hours had elapsed since we’d entered the Oval Office, but the meal was over, and it was time to leave. From beginning to end we had spent about twice as much time at the White House as we ever had at my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving or Christmas but still less time with Donald than Kid Rock, Sarah Palin, and Ted Nugent would two weeks later.

Somebody suggested that we all take individual pictures with Donald (though not with the guests of honor). When it was my turn, Donald smiled for the camera and gave a thumbs-up, but I could see the exhaustion behind the smile. It seemed that keeping up the cheerful facade was wearing on him.

“Don’t let them get you down,” I said to him as my brother took the picture. It wasn’t long after his first national security advisor had been fired in disgrace, and the cracks in his presidency were already beginning to show.

Donald jutted out his chin and clenched his teeth, looking for a moment like the ghost of my grandmother. “They’re not going to get me,” he said.

When Donald announced his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t think Donald took it seriously. He simply wanted the free publicity for his brand. He’d done that sort of thing before. When his poll numbers started to rise and he may have received tacit assurances from Russian president Vladimir Putin that Russia would do everything it could to swing the election in his favor, the appeal of winning grew.

“He’s a clown,” my aunt Maryanne said during one of our regular lunches at the time. “This will never happen.”

I agreed.

We talked about how his reputation as a faded reality star and failed businessman would doom his run. “Does anybody even believe the bullshit that he’s a self-made man? What has he even accomplished on his own?” I asked.

“Well,” Maryanne said, as dry as the Sahara, “he has had five bankruptcies.”

When Donald started addressing the opioid crisis and using my father’s history with alcoholism to burnish his anti-addiction bona fides to seem more sympathetic, both of us were angry.

“He’s using your father’s memory for political purposes,” Maryanne said, “and that’s a sin, especially since Freddy should have been the star of the family.”

We thought the blatant racism on display during Donald’s announcement speech would be a deal breaker, but we were disabused of that idea when Jerry Falwell, Jr., and other white evangelicals started endorsing him. Maryanne, a devout Catholic since her conversion five decades earlier, was incensed. “What the fuck is wrong with them?” she said. “The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. It’s mind boggling. He has no principles. None!”