Mary Trump, President Donald Trump’s niece, said she’s heard her uncle use anti-Semitic and racial slurs.
“Have you heard the president use the N-word?” Rachel Maddow asked Mary Trump on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on July 16.
“Yes,” Mary Trump said and was met with silence from the MSNBC host. “And anti-Semitic slurs repeatedly?” Maddow pressed. Trump also replied, “Yes.”
Mary Trump’s book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” was released on July 14 and sold around 950,000 copies that day, according to CNN. The figure, which CNN reported included pre-sales, audiobooks and e-books, is a record for publisher Simon & Schuster.
Mary Trump is the daughter of Frederick Trump Jr., Donald’s older brother who died from a heart attack in 1981.
Trump told The Washington Post in an interview published on July 16, “Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear [the Trump family] use the n-word or use anti-Semitic expressions.”
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, tweeted he didn’t recall seeing Mary Trump in 20 years, besides perhaps a large family gathering in 2017.
If she was there I don’t remember seeing her, and other than possibly that one large family gathering, I don’t believe I’ve seen her in approximately 20 years. https://t.co/AU5L5nBSok
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 15, 2020
Sarah Matthews, deputy White House press secretary, wrote to MSNBC, “This is a book of falsehoods, plain and simple. The President doesn’t use those words.”
According to Town and Country Magazine, Robert Trump, Trump’s youngest brother, attempted to block Mary Trump’s book from being published, citing a 2001 nondisclosure agreement (NDA) regarding the estate of Fred Trump Sr., who was Trump’s father. A New York State Supreme Court judge temporarily blocked the book’s publication on June 30, but on appeal, the hold was overturned the following day.
Even before the release of the book, President Trump has been accused of anti-Semitic rhetoric. In his defense, on February 2017 he said, “I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life,” in response to a reporter’s question on what to do about anti-Semitic attacks in the country.
After the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, Trump declared that there “were very fine people, on both sides” of the riot, including the white supremacists who marched while chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
Trump has also been accused of anti-Semitism after questioning American Jews’ loyalty, saying American Jews don’t love Israel enough; calling himself the “King of Israel” on Twitter; telling Florida Jews they had no choice but to vote for him or they would lose their money; tweeting a photo of money, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a Star of David together; and, most recently, on July 8, when he sent out a re-election campaign letter suggesting Democrats are trying to “rig the election” using money from Jewish billionaires “George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.”
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka Trump, both advisers to her father, and their three children are observant Jews. Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism in 2009.
Erin Ben-Moche contributed to this story.
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