Mary Trump's Book May Be The Beginning Of A Sh*tshow Donald Trump Never Saw Coming

Supreme Court rules on Trump's taxes and financials tomorrow. If they rule correctly, Mary Trump's book might be exactly the teaser we all needed.

Yesterday, all the newspapers started publishing excerpts from  Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man,    the new Simon & Schuster (LOL) book from Donald Trump's estranged niece Mary Trump. By dinnertime, TV journalists were petting the book like it was a precious stone, and also reading from it. Because that is what you do with books. You read them.

Rachel Maddow said she read the whole book yesterday, and proceeded to spend most of her show reading stories for the rest of us. Like this story, about how Donald Trump loves the military so much that he reportedly maybe was going to disown Donald Trump Jr., if that dumb idiot joined the military.

The story about time Donald Trump threatened to disown Don Jr. if he joined the military... https: //t.co/ReBxggjTDK

— Maddow Blog (@Maddow Blog) 1594175105.0 

From the book:

When we pointed out that our cousins would still benefit from what their parents were getting from my grandfather, Rob said, "Amy of them could be disowned at any time. Donny was going to join the army or some bullshit like that, and Donald and Ivana told him if he did, they'd disown him in a second."

Maybe that's what happened with those American troops Vladimir Putin paid bounties to have killed in Afghanistan, maybe Donald Trump disowned them.

There was also this segment, about Donald Trump's sister Maryanne Trump, who features in the book prominently. She used to be a lifetime federal judge, but literally quit judging to hide from a judicial inquiry into her role in the family's fraud,   as exposed by the New York Times , which happened in part because of its trusty source Mary Trump. As Maddow notes here, in any other normal world, that scandal would have been INSANE. Instead, it was like Thursday or whatever.

It is one of the great, overlooked jaw-droppers of the scandal-ridden Trump era that his older sister really did ha… https: //t.co/D3laLQ36oZ

— Maddow Blog (@Maddow Blog) 1594174632.0 

Again, the article that came out that made Maryanne Trump QUIT JUDGING FOREVER was the one Mary Trump helped make happen. The book also seems to lightly suggest Maryanne Trump got that nomination because Donald Trump's lawyer Roy Cohn made a call to Ed Meese in Reagan's Justice Department. That story has been reported before, but it's worth talking about a whole bunch right now. Anyway, TOTALLY NORMAL.

Also speaking of Maryanne Trump: Remember how Trump, according to the book, paid a dude to take his SATs and get him into Penn? Yeah well, apparently Maryanne Trump also did Trump's homework for him at Fordham. Because Trump has BEST BRAIN EVER.

Here is a nice clip about how much Donald Trump lies, knows he's lying, and enjoys lying:

The plot point that Mary Trump's new book keeps coming back to in every anecdote about Donald Trump is just about h… https: //t.co/7X8noRz7tC

— Maddow Blog (@Maddow Blog) 1594178411.0 

There were other stories from the book on the Maddow show, like for instance one where Trump actually asked Mary Trump to be his ghostwriter, which sounds like it would have been an absolute shitshow, partially owing to the fact that Mary Trump could not figure out what Trump did all day, for "work." Yes, it sounds like even when he was just a bankrupt hotel loser, he spent his day not working, but rather lazying around and talking on the phone and further squandering the fortune his father left him. So that sounds familiar.

Apparently he was really excited one day to show Mary Trump that he had some tremendous content she could put in the book. Turns out it was a rambling recorded monologue about all the pussies he tried to grab, but couldn't get there, followed by him talking about how gross all those women who wouldn't fuck him are, in hindsight. He didn't like how Madonna chewed gum, or something, and thought Katarina Witt's calves were too big. (How dare she have strong legs! What is she, the greatest figure skater of all time or something?)

What was really interesting, though, and the part of this book we think is going to keep stinging Donald Trump in the ass for the foreseeable future, is that this may be the second act of the massive 2018 New York Times   expose on the Trump family fraud machine, and it's coming in laser focus, at election time.

CNN has a long excerpt on just how the Times reporters got that story from Mary Trump, and you really owe it to yourself to read it all, because it's just so dang cool:

Mary Trump said she was initially approached at her home in April 2017 by Times reporter Susanne Craig.

"It is so not cool that you're showing up at my house," Mary Trump told Craig, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by CNN on Tuesday.

"I understand. I'm sorry," Craig replied, according to the book. "But we're working on a very important story about your family's finances, and we think you could really help us."

Mary Trump said that she told Craig she couldn't be of help, but that Craig left a business card and told her to reach out if she changed her mind.

"A few weeks later, I fractured the fifth metatarsal of my left foot," Mary Trump said. "For the next four months, I was a prisoner in my home, my foot elevated at all times as I sat on the couch."

During this period of downtime, Mary Trump said she kept the news "constantly on in the background" and scrolled through Twitter.

"I watched in real time as Donald shredded norms, endangered alliances, and trod upon the vulnerable," Mary Trump wrote. "The only thing about it that surprised me was the increasing number of people willing to enable him."

Mary Trump said she received a follow-up letter from Craig in which The Times reporter said documents she had could help "rewrite the history of the President of the United States."

After initially ignoring Craig, Mary Trump said she changed her mind.

"As I watched our democracy disintegrating and people's lives unraveling because of my uncle's policies, I kept thinking about Susanne Craig's letter," she wrote. "I found her business card and called her."

There was fuckery when it came to Mary Trump getting the docs to which she was entitled, but after some wrangling, it happened. And one day, she ultimately went home to meet the Times reporters, with 19 boxes of files in tow from the law firm that settled Fred Trump's estate:

"The three reporters were waiting for me in David's white SUV, which sported a pair of reindeer antlers and a huge red nose wired to the grill."

"When I showed them the boxes, there were hugs all around," Mary Trump added. "It was the happiest I'd felt in months."

If you'll remember, part of what Times reporters David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner ultimately found, by poring over Fred Trump's books with a fine-toothed comb, is that Trump not only didn't get a million-buck "loan" from his dad, he got over $400 million worth of shit from Daddy, which the family then (allegedly?) undervalued and cooked down, partially for the purposes of keeping as much money as they could from Daddy's estate, partially for other (allegedly?) fraudy reasons.

One tiny snippet from the Times report, which we should all go back and read for homework this weekend:  

The president's parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

And a tiny snippet of Wonkette's lovely piece on the Times report, written by Liz:

A friendly appraiser is a real estate magnate's best friend. And the Trump family found the friendliest appraiser in all the land! Which is how they wound up with an appraisal valuing Fred Trump's real estate empire of thousands of New York apartments at just $94 million in 1995. With a little more legal magic, they whittled the valuation down to $57 million. So when Fred Trump gifted the real estate to his children in a trust, it triggered just $20.5 million dollars in gift taxes. They did the same trick when Fred Trump's wife Mary died in 2000. And then they sold the whole lot for $900 million in 2003.

As Liz remarked at the time, if the Times 's reporting (for which the reporters won the Pulitzer) is correct, the Trumps didn't just break the speed limit with their fudging of numbers, they SET FIRE TO THE HIGHWAY.

And there was so much more.

As we write this piece, we are waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on whether the state of New York and Congress must be allowed to see Trump's taxes and financial records. The ruling didn't come out today, and the Court announced that tomorrow will be the last day for opinions. So ... all aboard for tomorrow!

This story may only just be beginning.

[ CNN / New York Times ]

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