Mary Trump and MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC)
Few people on the planet know America's new president-elect the way Mary Trump knows him. She has watched him wrestle with a damaged psyche that, in her view, makes him unfit to serve in the office he soon will assume. She has spent time in the dysfunctional household that produced him. As a clinical psychologist and best-selling author, she has the expertise to understand the mental-health flaws that took him down a deviant path that led courts to find him a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and a serial abuser of women, who has vowed to build his second term around a maniacal desire to seek retribution against perceived enemies -- whether or not there is the slightest evidence they have wronged him.
As Donald Trump's niece, and an outspoken critic of his effort to regain the presidency, Mary Trump knows America is in for some dark days, which we apparently brought on ourselves. Reports are starting to surface of oddities in Tuesday's election, which indicate we cannot understand how the results happened without a thorough investigation. I submit that interviewing Mary Trump would be a good place for investigators to start.
In a post yesterday at her Substack page, "The Good in Us," Mary Trump writes of her concerns about the damage a chaotic and divisive Donald Trump second term could inflict on America. Because of her status as a mental-health professional, Mary Trump wrote in March of this year about a Trump campaign staffer contacting her out of concern that the candidate's mental health was declining. Mary Trump wrote about that experience under the headline "Losing It." In her most recent article -- titled "Waking up to the End of America; It happened here" -- Mary clearly is trying to understand the events that led to America taking a frightful gut punch on Tuesday. I believe her words can help many Americans cope with having their lives upended. Mary writes:
I went to bed just after 7:00 a.m. so I already knew, but it wasn’t until I woke up a couple of hours later that I fully processed what this country had done. Nothing seemed right—the sun shone too brightly, and the American flag that flies on the roof of a building a couple of blocks away from me wasn’t at half mast. Surely, it should have been.
This is much worse than 2016, but today I am possessed of an exquisite detachment that, while I know it is bad for me, I will hold onto for as long as I can. Because I really did think we were better than this, and I don’t want to confront the feelings associated with recognizing just how wrong I was.
I can't really offer you much in the way of comfort today. There is a lot that's going to be playing out in the next days, weeks, and months, and we are going to have to grapple with all of it under pretty unimaginable circumstances. There's no false hope; no silver lining.
I don’t think Vice President Kamala Harris could have run a better, more professional, more inspiring campaign. It was nearly flawless, but for many reasons rooted in our dark and desperate and unacknowledged history, too many people refused to buy into her message of hope and unity. Too many people want what Donald Trump has to offer them. It will not serve them well.
I think it's fair to say it will be much worse for those of us who fought as hard as we could to make sure we never had to wake up to this nightmare. As always, in times of great upheaval, it will be worst for the most vulnerable among us.
I do think it's important, though, especially now, to acknowledge what we are and have been to each other as a community, what we will continue to be—what you have all created here. We worked as hard as we could and left it all on the field, individually and collectively. We’ll have to examine why it wasn't enough. Some of the reasons are obvious, some will require closer analysis. We’ll get to those as the fraught days of the transition unfold.
I also want to reassure you about the only thing I can: I’m not going anywhere. The Good in Us and
Mary Trump Media will be here for the duration. I had hoped we would
wake up today with a mission to keep pressure on a new Democratic
administration to do everything in its power to strengthen our democracy
instead of constantly fighting a rear-guard action against encroaching
fascism. Instead, the fascism is here, and we have to confront it
head-on.
Our goal is to be at the leading edge of the fight against the tyranny that will soon engulf what once was the world’s greatest democracy. There aren’t words to convey effectively how devastating it is that the American experiment has failed; to learn so many of us apparently place no value in the promise this country offered; to find that tens of millions of us are completely sanguine about the repercussions the rest of the world and future generations now face because of this violent, reckless decision.
My heart breaks for us. My heart breaks for Ukraine. My heart breaks for our NATO allies and the coalition we formed in the wake of World War II after we defeated fascism. The irony is not lost on me that it is fascism that will take a wrecking ball to what we created together 75 years ago. The irony is not lost on me that the person chosen to lead the effort to destroy what so many people dedicated and sacrificed their lives to build and protect is a deviant autocrat devoid of empathy, humility, and honor.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear in the last few months that one of the reasons we have ended up here is the so-called traditional/legacy/corporate media. Time and time again, when the American people needed clarity and reasoned analysis, we got false equivalence and normalization. We got lied to.
I will never lie to you. Our goal at Mary Trump Media is to fill the void that has been left by those who have turned their backs on their responsibility to protect and strengthen democracy and now democracy lies in ruins at our feet.
I pledge my unwavering allegiance to you and to the truth. I will do my best to look squarely in the face of—and guard against—the horrors we will be facing.
To those of you who have been, and continue to be with me on this journey, I am eternally grateful. I promise I’ll do my best to move forward and find some hope in what is an abjectly dark and tragic time.
We have our work cut out for us, but we know what we need to do.
Thank you.