How Donald Trump's father instilled a culture of racism & patriarchy in the family

i wanted to ask you about a new york times report long ago in 1927 that your grandfather donald trump's father fred trump was arrested at a ku klux klan riot in queens new york the article subtitled clan sales policemen it reports that a thousand klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all battle it lists fred trump with his address as one of seven men who were arrested and arraigned for the assault charges against him were dropped new york police commissioner warren is quoted in the article saying the klan not only wore gowns but had hoods over their faces almost completely hiding their identity the report was found and published in 2015 by the website boing boing in a new york times interview about the discovery your uncle donald trump said i saw that it was one of one little website that said it it never happened they said there were no charges no nothing it's unfair to mention it to be honest because there were no charges they said there were charges against other people but there were absolutely no charges totally false he said but we're going back to that 2017 report in the new york times do you know about this mary trump did you hear about it as you were growing up no i didn't um although you know my family wasn't great at telling stories um but you know unlike donald's i don't doubt the validity of the report it would be kind of a random thing to make up 60 years ago or 80 years ago whenever it was um the only thing that surprises me because you know my family was quite anti-semitic along with other things um so the only thing that surprised me is that my grandfather would take time away from his business to go to anything honestly but it wouldn't surprise me that he shared the sentiment did you ever hear uh donald trump your uncle use the n-word yeah sure yeah sure you know i i know that sounds awful to put it that way but when you live in a family um and you know you're a kid it's not that i didn't know it was wrong i did because i i lived a very different kind of experience growing up um you know i lived in jamaica queens which was uh you know lower class working class and predominantly african-american i went to a school that was predominantly jewish so i didn't understand the animus but it wasn't shocking because it's just the way it was these are this is how adults in my orbit um spoke and behaved and now of course i uh you know i learned a long time ago that it wasn't just something i disagreed with but it was deeply wrong um but you know uh i guess i say it the way i say it is just to underscore how casual and accepted it was as far as my grandfather he was um basically the the only person in the family whose opinion mattered he had all the power uh you know it was a very patriarchal system i grew up in um there was a lot of misogyny so being being a girl in that family was an automatic strike against you um and my grandfather was the kind of man who believed in um dynasty in a way i mean he wouldn't have put it in those terms but you know he had his real estate empire and his oldest son and namesake my father was going to be his successor and his empire was going to last in perpetuity unfortunately for my father's sake he wasn't the right kind of person in my grandfather's eyes my grandfather needed somebody who was a killer who was a tough guy as somebody who would win at all costs and was not weak in any way in my family being kind was considered being weak admitting your mistakes and apologizing for for them was uh equated with weakness as well so um i don't know exactly when it happened but at some point uh certainly i would imagine by the time my dad was in college my grandfather already knew that he was probably not going to cut it as his uh heir apparent so donald who was seven and a half years younger learned from my grandfather's psychological and emotional abuse of my dad and and the the message was essentially don't be like freddie and since my grandfather ran my family as a zero-sum game and there could only be one winner and everybody else was a loser donald was determined to win and uh he in my grandfather's eyes at least did and you know successfully auditioned as my dad's replacement

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 67,778

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News, mary trump interview, mary trump book, mary trump tell all book, donald trump racism, fred trump biography, trump racism, trump empire, trump real estate tycoon

Id: Ha13dO7mzTw

Length: 5min 51sec (351 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020