On Thursday he faced a strong challenge as to why readers should believe his explosive claims about President Donald Trump and his family, the president’s niece Mary Trump, insisted that her new book comes from “a very deep experience within the family”.
“I am not a stranger writing it, I am his niece,” Mary Trump said in an exclusive television interview during the day on ABC’s “The View.”
Last week, the new book, titled “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Most Dangerous Man in the World,” sold more than 1.35 million copies, according to publisher Simon and Schuster.
But on Thursday, “The View” co-host Meghan McCain repeatedly questioned Mary Trump’s credentials as a member of the Trump family.
McCain noted that Mary Trump has little or no current relationship with the Trump family, including her own cousins, the President’s children.
“If you were probably close to that family, you would probably know your cousin Don Jr. and Ivanka on a level that you clearly don’t know,” McCain said.
In a tweet on Friday, the president described Mary Trump as “a rarely seen niece who knows little about me.”
During the Thursday episode of “The View,” McCain bluntly told the President’s niece, “I don’t like family books that tell everything … because they’re counted on the one hand, and the subjects are often villains to the point that I don’t. ” you don’t really end up believing what is written ”
McCain, daughter of the late Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, noted that “books have been written about my family that are complete and total garbage … [but] at the end of the day, you get a good salary. ”
In response, Mary Trump noted that her relationship with her “much younger” cousins is “irrelevant” to the “foundational” story she is telling about “how Donald became the person he is.”
She said if she had wanted to “get paid” she would have written a book 10 years ago, when she was not taking “the risk” of attacking a sitting American president.
“But I felt it was extremely important that the American people have all the information they need to make an informed decision” about the president while seeking reelection, Mary Trump said.
Her book features a scathing depiction of the incumbent president, largely drawing, Mary Trump says, from the author’s memories, conversations with family members, and legal, financial and family documents.
As Mary Trump recounts, Donald Trump grew up in a “dysfunctional” family whose family members were used as “pawns” and believed that “money got in the way” for acts of love.
He previously told ABC News “it is impossible to know who Donald might have been” if he had been born into a different family, but his father, Fred Trump, was a “sociopath” who pushed his children to “succeed at all costs.” seeing people as “expendable” and “doing anything to get attention, financial rewards, and ‘win’.”
That has created a “dangerous situation” for the United States, he said.
In her interview with “The View” on Thursday, Mary Trump said the President’s family “excels at” being “cruelly free.”
According to her account, tensions within the family reached a boiling point in 1999, after her grandfather died and she learned that he had essentially excluded her and her brother from his will. When she and her brother filed a lawsuit, the rest of the family sought to “cause us more pain and make us more desperate,” ending the health insurance they had always received through her grandfather’s company, Mary Trump wrote in her book.
They finally reached an agreement.
On Thursday, Mary Trump also claimed that she heard Donald Trump and other family members use “the n-word” as a “generalization.”
“It was not unusual in the family,” he said, adding that as she grew up she “never [knew] someone from my family actually to interact with a person of color. ”
The White House has disputed such claims and dismissed the book as a paper full of “falsehoods” and “absurd accusations.”
“Mary Trump and the publisher of her book can claim to be acting in the public interest, but this book is clearly in the author’s own financial interest,” the White House said in a statement.
“President Trump has been in office for more than three years working on behalf of the American people. Why speak now? The president describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said that his father was very good to him. He said his father was loving and not hard on him as a child, “the statement continued.
Lucien Bruggeman, Nadine Shubailat and John Santucci of ABC News contributed to this report.
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