American Caligula
A Review of Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough
The Roman Emperor Tiberius said of his nephew, Caligula, that he had reared “a viper for the Roman people…” and as detailed in Mary Trump’s new book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man it describes how Fred Trump created a viper for the American people in Donald Trump.
I expected Too Much and Never Enough to be a sensationalized account of a family, but I found it too be a cool accounting of her family’s history, she stood back from the personal and all the hurt the family had incurred on her and applied her background in psychiatry to her extended family. That is not to say she didn’t delve into family history, she illustrates that her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr. built from scratch a building empire that started with him building garages for his neighbors to a New York empire, that when her grandfather died, she later learned his fortune was nearly a billion dollars, while not missing that that empire was built through a lot of government contracts, FHA, and political connections (what she does seem to miss is that Fred Trump was a more or less a slumlord, and a famous one at that, Woody Guthrie penned the song Old Man Trump about him). It also illustrates that as much as Fred Trump Sr. was a self-made man, her uncle Donald Trump is not. Donald Trump is the product of Fred Trump’s money, and political connections, Fred Trump footed the bill for Donald in almost every way imaginable and was responsible for Donald’s early success such as the Commodore Hotel and Trump Tower.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a good portion of the book deals with the extended family’s relationship with Ms. Trump’s father, Fred Trump Jr. If there was ever a Trump that was treated “unfairly” it was Freddy Trump and by his own family. Fred Trump Jr. wanted nothing more than to be an airline pilot, a profession he seemed to have a passion and talent for. He was admitted into TWA’s flight school without any military training, and after he got his wings, he was deemed good enough for promotion to train pilots on the next generation of jets. The drawback, his father who considered being a pilot nothing more than a “bus driver in the sky”. In retaliation for this perceived betrayal of not wanting to carry on his legacy Fred Sr. berated and humiliated his son in front of the rest of the family who considered Fred Jr. fair game especially Donald who carried out his father’s terror campaign against his older brother and directly benefitted from Freddy’s demise, as eldest son and heir apparent.
There are a couple of loose ends that leave us hanging. One, were Mary and her brother reinstated to their father’s portion from her grandfather’s will? Did the Trump’s ever reinstate her nephew, who has congenital medical problems back onto the family’s medical plan? Maybe that doesn’t matter anymore because Too Much and Never Enough has made more since it’s publication than Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal has since its publication almost thirty-three years ago. Congratulations Mary! Anybody know how Don Jr’s self-published book is doing?
Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough is a must read if you want a view into the character or lack of in the present resident of the White House. We have first-hand witnessed his antics, excesses, abuses of power, and enmity towards the American people, his supposed constituents, Donald Trump is the American Caligula.