Why My Aunt Melania’s Statement is So Despicable | The Daily Beast Podcast

She claims to have nothing, had nothing to do with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. There is so much documentary evidence to the contrary. To come in and say, I'm not a victim, I wasn't a victim. Well then, therefore, if we can show that you were connected to these people, at least you willingly entered into a relationship with two people we know were among the worst human beings on the planet.

What she did was really despicable. The victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Galeen Maxwell have tried to get justice. To say that they they need to do more and she has nothing to do with it was just cruel and insulting.

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Today, we are talking to the niece of President Trump, Mary Trump, the author, the clinical psychologist who brings real family cred to her analysis of Donald Trump, how he reacts under stress, for example, trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and what on earth he could be thinking about his wife, the First Lady's statement on the Epstein files last Thursday.

So before we get to our conversation, very quick plea to please smash the subscription button wherever you get your podcasts and to remind you that if you want a good read about Trump, this book, Who Could Ever Love You, is a family memoir from Mary Trump.

And it's really riveting, actually. I strongly recommend it if you're going on a plane, if you're just sitting by a beach and you want something to dive into, this is a must read. Okay, no time to waste, the world is waiting. Mary Trump, let's get into it.

Mary Trump, fantastic to have you back on the podcast. A lot to discuss, not least how your uncle, the President, copes under pressure. I want to talk to you about the 25th Amendment, because you have talked to us before about how you see echoes of your grandfather's dementia in Donald Trump's face. But I wanted to kick off by talking about, I guess she's your step-aunt, Melania Trump, and what you made of her statement on Thursday

that she wanted Congress to talk to the victims, that she never really knew Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, that she's never been accused of anything, and weirdly demanding that Congress start talking to some of the men involved, as if she's talking about her husband.

I'm really fascinated. You're a clinical psychologist. You study this stuff. What was she saying and what was she not saying in that statement on Thursday?

Well, weirdly, what she was saying is, I don't have any connection to a pedophile and sex trafficker, which is typically not something you expect a first lady of the United States to have to come out and say. So she's clearly getting ahead of something.

I want to be clear. I met Melania once, and it was a very long time ago, so I do not profess to know her personally at all. As bizarre as the statement was for so many reasons, chief among them the fact that it focused attention on the issue Donald has been desperately trying to get us to stop paying attention to, the Epstein files, she's obviously getting ahead of something,

you would think. Because one, she claims to have nothing, had nothing to do with Ghislaine Maxell and Jeffrey Epstein. There is so much documentary evidence to the contrary there. And to come in and say, I'm not a victim, I wasn't a victim. Well, then, therefore, if we can show that you were connected to these people. At least you willingly entered into a relationship with two people we know were among the worst human beings on the planet.

It's hard. This is the one thing I'm having a little trouble figuring out. It seems unfathomable that she didn't have to get permission to do this. So why would Donald's people think this was a good idea? Unless of course, and this has been the joke going around, he's

trying to distract from Iran. I don't know. Right, right. With your psychologist hat on, what did you make of her delivery? It was very aggressive. Just the way she walked into that room, as if she has the unearned confidence to think that people are just going to believe her because she said something. I think she's a little out of her depth here,

but credit where credit is due. I mean, she clearly thought that she was owning this whole situation.

To me, she looked angry, as if she didn't actually want to be there. I mean, what I find fascinating about her is she was a model. And yet, she doesn't appear to really enjoy the limelight in the way that her husband doesn't ever want anybody else in the limelight except himself.

Yeah, that's really interesting. But Melania never seems to want to be where she is, particularly if it's with Donald. So again, that gets us back to why would anybody in Donald's camp think that this was a good idea if she was doing it?

And she did seem angry. But again, I think that this was a good idea if she was doing it. And she did seem angry. Um, but again, I think that's fairly common. But it was a very aggressive, kind of catwalk, 80s shoulders look she had going on. And, um, yeah, angry, resentful, like, why should she have to do this thing?

Well, nobody said you did. But thank you for reminding us about the Epstein files, Melania.

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those annoying scam calls and emails. So scrub your data now and give yourself some peace of mind. Act now to get an exclusive 60% off with an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com forward slash beast or click the link in the episode description box. Their relationship certainly from the outside and who among us knows appears very transactional. She claims she wants transparency, and yet he's the very person who's

tried to keep this hidden for as long as he could until his own Republicans, and certainly Thomas Massey and the three women, Nancy Mace, Lauren Bobert, and then Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was still in Congress, defied him. And one can't forget that Lauren Boebert was taken into the Situation Room and shouted

at by the president to try and keep the Epstein files under wraps. So here we have his wife saying, no, let's bring transparency to the Epstein files. I've been accused of nothing. Let's talk to the victims, and let's see who else needs to be brought to justice.

Here's the thing, though. She has no power to make any of this happen. So I think it's just as likely that, as I said earlier, she's trying to get ahead of something while throwing people under the bus. And what she did was really despicable.

The victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Galee Maxwell have tried to get justice. They have spoken to whoever would listen to them. They have demonstrated kind of unthinkable bravery in the face of intense opposition from the President of the United States.

So to say that they need to do more and she has nothing to do with it was just cruel and insulting. So I think she is trying to lay the case that she's being completely transparent here, but don't believe your own lying eyes when you see me in photographs with Galait Maxwell

Ignore the, uh, chummy emails we sent each other.

but I have no real power to...

He promised and promised and promised. And when it became a reality, he changed his mind and then claimed that he was willing to have everything revealed, but it wasn't up to him, which it was. And then he continued to stonewall. So it's almost the same trick she's trying to pull here, claiming transparency while denying reality and saying,

well, I, you know, but I can't do anything about it because, you know, who am I? Yeah, I found it offensive, quite frankly.

It's so fascinating, claiming transparency while denying reality. It's clear they see themselves as separate brands. Do you also read this as her trying to separate her brand from his? I mean, the story of the 13-year-old

saying that she was abused by Donald Trump, which has been repeatedly denied by the White House. She was interviewed four times by the FBI. She's received a settlement from the Epstein estate, which means that they acknowledge that she was abused, at least by Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think this is Melania actually paying attention to these kind of exes accusation, seeing her husband's name in the Epstein

files, as many times as she has, and thinking I need to, I need to separate myself from this, I can't have my brand attached to his we are not a horse and carriage. I want to be the horse. And also she's much younger than him. So she's got a life post his presidency in a way that he doesn't have.

Yeah, that's a great way to put it. He wants to keep her brand separate from his. And wouldn't you know, there's a lot of that going around. Just ask Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nick Fuentes and all of these other horrible people who suddenly think that Donald has gone too far. You know, in

some cases it's the F.C. Files, in some cases it's Iran, in some cases it's both. But here's the thing. These people's brands should be tarnished forever. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Melania can say all they want. Oh, he's a totally different person from the guy we used to know. No, he's not.

He's exactly the same person. And they are all responsible to varying degrees for helping him get as far as he's gotten. So spare me, quite honestly. And I think these people should not be accepted back into polite society.

They certainly shouldn't have their reputations rehabilitated. She has been complicit in so much of this. And I don't really care, do you?

Quoting her own jacket back at her marriage, Trump. So one of the things I remember from our very first conversation was you talking about the dementia that runs in your family and watching your grandfather beginning to lose his grip and his memory on what was happening around him,

and that you had begun to notice flashes of this in the president. And obviously, over the last couple of weeks to do with the war in Iran, people have been saying he's losing his mind, especially after the two posts that he posted on Easter Sunday. And then on Monday, you know, calling the Iranians crazy bastards, demanding they open the Strait of Hormuz

and then saying he was going to bomb civilization to the end of time as it were, back to the Stone Age. Can you just talk a little bit about the things you saw with your grandfather, the sort of vacant stare I remember you mentioning, and then the echoes that you see in your uncle?

Yeah, it's increasingly alarming. And again, to those people who say that Donald's not the same person he used to be, I think what's happening is, as he declines increasingly rapidly, as physically, psychologically, emotionally, and cognitively, he is just revealing who he's been hiding all along, in some ways. Um, so...

It's weird because Donald looks a lot like my grandmother. So, sometimes I see both of my grandparents in him, and it's a little disturbing. But in terms of the similarities between him and my grandfather, he's about the same age now as my grandfather was when his Alzheimer's was becoming really apparent

and impossible to hide.

And the first time I noticed it, Rose was becoming really apparent and impossible to hide.

was a legitimately sharp guy, unlike Donald. We were at an event in Brooklyn honoring my grandparents for something. And there were a lot of people. It was outside, so it must have been in the summer. And suddenly, he grabbed my Uncle Rob's forearm. And he looked terrified.

He suddenly looked like he didn't know where he was, who these people were, or why he was there. And very frequently, or I should say with increasing frequency, it seems that Donald is also not oriented to time and place. Plus, of course, the falling asleep in the middle of the day, something my grandfather started to do more, and the lack of impulse control. That to me

is probably the most alarming similarity, because that only gets worse. And it got very bad with my grandfather. And Donald already started out being a fairly unhinged person. And now he's threatening genocide. So how much worse can it get?

So Mary, what was the lack of impulse control in your grandfather? How did that show itself?

Unfortunately, this typically happened very late at night when my grandmother was alone with him. Um... It didn't happen so much during the day. And he would, uh, accuse her of stealing his checkbook. And he developed this obsession with going broke.

He was terrified he was going to be poor. So when he couldn't find his checkbook, and he would accuse her, he would go into flights of rage that terrified her. Now, luckily, he never got physically violent with her, but there was a point at which, in addition to, uh, on a couple of vacations,

leaving the house in the middle of the night in his boxer shorts, he, um... They got security. Uh, or, you know, not security, but they got somebody to be in the house overnight to keep my grandmother safe in the event that it

you know he did lose so much control that he got physical with her which again thankfully he never did but you know when I would go visit her she would just be shaken to the core because my grandfather was many awful things but he was not somebody who lost his temper like that, at least not with any frequency. So, you know, Donald has already started from a place of being volatile and not having great impulse control to begin with. So it's a little bit sobering to consider where this could end.

And Mary, how old was your grandfather when he started exhibiting these symptoms?

Again, about Donald's age, right? Late 70s, early 80s? Yeah.

OK, all of which sounds alarming. And your poor grandmother, and of which sounds alarming and your poor grandmother and of course, relatives of people who've gone through Alzheimer's or dementia know how incredibly difficult it is to look after them and your story of having to get someone to be in the house at night to stop him wandering out, you know, semi-clothed is alarming and hopefully the president would have security, you know,

hopefully the Secret Service would stop him from doing that. Although it didn't stop the Russian Secret Service from, do you remember when Yeltsin was found on Pennsylvania Avenue in his underpants? Oh my gosh. I don't know what the Russian Secret Service were doing, but they certainly weren't protecting him. And also, of course, people can be very sneaky and figure out ways to get around their secret service. You described how your grandfather would also look vacant. And I remember you saying when Donald Trump was in the White House and he had some visitors there, including Dr. Oz

and RFK Jr., obviously the Secretary for Health and Human Services, unbelievably. That's another episode. That's another episode. Right. Well, we should actually we should come back to him because you have your own very successful podcast and you might want to give him some tips because he's launching the Secretary's Podcast,

I think it's called. But the man collapsed in the office. He'd come in to talk about the reducing of prices with GLP-1 drugs. And I think perhaps overwhelmed by the event in the Oval Office,

he passed out and someone put his legs up in the air. And your uncle stood there just staring out and he looked utterly confused. And it was a moment where I think a lot of people looked at him and thought, ooh, all is not well.

Did that seem like a familiar family look to you?

Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was actually a combination of two things. The confusion, you know, that not being oriented to time and place that I mentioned earlier, but also Donald's complete lack of empathy. He cannot handle other people's suffering,

or, you know, other people needing help. He just, he can't deal with it. He's not interested. And it bores him or sickens him. Um, so it was this weird combination of those two things. But, uh, again...

it's... in terms of the lack of empathy, that's just a difference in degree, not kind. He's never been empathetic. The other thing, though, is definitely a function of the cognitive decline he's obviously experiencing.

And you don't need to be a neurologist or a neuropsychologist to identify that, I think.

No, completely. And we have chronicled the daily Daily Beast the physical aspects of his health that we can see the swollen ankles, the bruising on his hands, the unfortunate rash on the back of his head. So given what you know about his family history, do you

think he's still fit to sit in the Oval Office? He's never been fit. But now we have completely objective concerns that anybody, whether you support him or not, whether you think that he was fit at some point or not, we could all agree that somebody who can't remember where they are, who threatens genocide, who doesn't have any impulse control, who seems to be rotting from the inside out. Uh, like, he looks like the Dorian Gray's portrait,

you know? Um, and that Rashid Sfog, our friend David Rothkopf, or hers, who is creeping tree rot, um, which I enjoy. So, there are, you know, clearly, way too many people didn't think that his having severe untreated psychiatric disorders was disqualifying.

But I think most reasonable people can agree that having a president who's in severe cognitive decline, whether dementia or Alzheimer's, or who is suffering from very serious physical ailments about which we know nothing, is not somebody, you know, that should not be, those are not qualities we want in a president. I don't think that's arguable. Great. So

you have watched him over the years deal with different levels of stress from being on The Apprentice to his companies going bankrupt, to the accusations that led to a series of trials during his four years out of office.

You've watched him deal with the stress of all that. Now the MAGA base or many of the key voices in the MAGA base, you mentioned Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, even the appalling Alex Jones are saying that the president has gone insane over this war, that this makes no sense.

How do you think he is reacting to the idea that his very core, the very nexus of his supporters are now criticizing him, saying that he's losing his mind, and are very clearly looking for the post-Trump candidate to support.

I think it's driving him even crazier than he already is. He's experiencing levels of stress he's never experienced before. And the reason for that is, on some level, I think he's beginning to understand that he's, one, lost control, and two, nobody's going to be

able to bail him out of this. Now, one of the reasons in the past, he was able to deal with very stressful situations. Not that it didn't take a toll on him, it did, but because he's always had somebody bailing him out. Always.

Whether it was my grandfather, or the banks, or NBC, or the Republican Party, or the Supreme Court. Always somebody, he's gotten away with all of it. And it probably confuses him greatly that that's not happening now, because here's the problem. Who's going to bail him out of the mess he made?

He fired Pam Bondi, not because she was insufficiently loyal. I mean, she's just destroying the rule of law in America on his behalf, but because she cannot save him from himself. And nobody else can either. And he certainly can't. And all of that combined is why we are seeing this lashing out that can only be described as depraved and crazy. I mean, he threatened eight people with genocide. Right.

And all because he started a war without anybody else's permission, and it's going badly because he doesn't know anything, and all of the wrong people are in charge, like Pete Hegseth, for example. So we're at a very treacherous period in our history. And the way he's behaving is only going to get worse. I mean, as I've said many times, there's no worst for him. There will always be worse. And the problem now is, not only can nobody

save him from himself, he can't save him from himself, but there's nobody around him who even feels like they need to, whether because they don't think they can or because they shouldn't. No sane person should have wanted him to send out

the tweets that he sent out last week. And yet, it's all okay for these people, and nobody, nobody's going to stop him unless, hopefully, there are still people in the military Pete Hexhouse has gutted who will refuse to follow illegal orders.

I don't know.

So, someone had sent me a picture of Susie Wiles and your grandmother saying that actually, Susie Wiles is the only person that doesn't look like a version of a MAGA woman. And the reason is that she looks like his mother. And in terms of sort of hairstyle and presentation, slightly conservative, I actually thought it was quite a good comment. And I wondered if you had thought about this and whether or not Susie Wiles is in some

way, because she's so different to the other women around him who all have a very similar look and they've got inflated faces and all their extended hair and eyelashes. Whether or not you thought there might be some truth in that, that actually Susie does look like his mom.

That's really interesting. I mean, I've never seen it, but again, I also haven't seen lots of pictures of Susie Wells. I mean, I have an idea what she looks like, but I'd have to look a little bit more closely. Maybe.

You know what's weird about that is that Donald had nothing but contempt for his mother. He didn't respect her at all. And there are many complicated reasons for that. Misogyny is the most obvious, but there are a lot of other things going on in that relationship,

starting from when he was quite young. Um, so...

And she was ill when he was young, right?

Yeah, when he was two and a half, my grandmother was essentially absent, emotionally and or physically, for about a year, because she was so ill. Not her fault, but... She, there was nobody to take her place,

so she didn't really have a primary caregiver. And that's a crucially important age in your development, to have somebody at least taking a little bit of care of your emotional and physical needs. And then when she got better, she didn't really do anything to repair the rift between them. So it kind of went downhill from there.

But maybe if that is you know, if that is the case, maybe that's just another indication that he's regressing and kind of wants this maternal figure in his life telling him what to do. I'm not, I'm not sure. Although I can't say that my grandmother ever played that role either, but, uh, you're right, she's so different from any other woman in his orbit, uh, it's hard to see why he... Now, I don't think he chose her,

but it's hard to see why he agreed to that, except that perhaps... she really doesn't do anything to rein him in. I'm not really sure what the purpose of her is, quite frankly. And my grandmother didn't really do much either.

Well, she's supposed to be a sort of wise hand on his shoulder without telling him what he can and can't do. But I thought it was an interesting comment from someone who'd compared what they look like and certainly their hair, which I know is a very superficial thing to think about, but it somehow represents the kind of woman, perhaps, that they had in the nature that they had in common. So, another thing I've heard you talk about is Donald Trump's nihilism, that if it's not going to work for him, he's going to pull the whole house down around him. And I wondered what you thought of him sending JD Vance

to do the work of trying to come up with a deal with the Iranians.

Even Donald is trying to distance himself from himself. He needs to distance himself from the choices he's making and from the policies, his egregious policies that are hurting everybody. So what better thing to do than throw your vice president under the bus by putting him in what is essentially

an impossible situation? I saw right before I came on that Iran has changed its demands in advance of this meeting with Vance. So we've seen Donald do similar things to Hegseth and Rubio, as if he is well in advance of any, the time of accountability, making it clear that if things go south, it's anybody but him. And that's another thing he has in common with my grandfather. My grandfather was never

wrong, would never take responsibility for anything, and was always finding somebody else to blame. He taught that lesson to Donald in the space. Maybe just by virtue of the fact that he's vice president and he's very, very well connected with the tech oligarchs, he probably sees Vance as his most likely successor. And the idea that anybody could or would succeed him is unthinkable to him.

So he wants to undercut whoever is likely to succeed him so they can't succeed him. If he can't succeed himself, so they can't succeed him. If he can't succeed himself, then no one should succeed him.

Pretty much, yeah.

So Mary Trump, how do you, what do people say when you go about the world? You share the same last name as the most controversial president, certainly in living memory. What do people say,

or do you manage to fly under the radar?

Oh yeah, I mean, I live in New York City, nobody cares. That's one of my favorite things about New York.

Right, nobody cares.

We're all busy and we have other things to worry about. But in general, yeah, I definitely fly under the radar. That's for sure. And on those rare occasions, I can. That subject comes up. People, why don't you change your name?

Well, it's my name. I know it might be going the way of Hitler, but for the moment, it's my name, and I'm going to keep it. I would prefer that Donald and all of his useless children change their last name.

So, you know.

Fair. Have you ever asked them to?

Not directly, but in other ways.

And I'm assuming that you won't get an invitation to Donald Jr. and Bettina Anderson's wedding.

Oh, I didn't. I didn't. First of all, I didn't even know her name. And I didn't know they were getting married.

I think they're getting married and had hoped to have the reception in the ballroom. But of course, the ballroom's been stopped. So as yet, no news of where the reception is being held.

Oh, I would so love to go. Maybe I can swing an invitation.

I think you should try. Mary, I think that for the sake of the Daily Beast and for the sake of the Mary Trump podcast, you should make up quickly and then report from inside. You could possibly report live on FaceTime from inside the wedding of what will certainly be the year.

Yeah, absolutely. And all that would be required is one, sucking up to Donald and two, selling my soul. So.

Pretty confident neither of those two things are going to happen. But we're extremely grateful that you joined us today. Mary Trump, you always have such fascinating observations about your grandparents and how it reflects on our current president. And I really appreciate you coming in.

Well, thanks, Joanna. I love hanging out with you. This was great.

OK, well, more to come.

Definitely.

I find Mary Trump's perspective from a family point of view really compelling because it's so unusual to get family members that can give you that kind of insight who grew up and started noticing that her grandfather was losing a sense of time and of place and losing his memory and becoming, well, less in control of his impulses and then seeing those frightening echoes in the man who is the President of the United States,

the leader of the free world. And I think this week, well, millions of people have seen his strange lack of impulse control, particularly when it comes to his true socials and the way he puts his

communications out there. Frequently, it seems, without any pre-knowledge from his team. Anyway, we will have Mary back soon. Enjoy your Sunday and remember, as the First Lady has taught us, be beast. So the good news is we have so many be beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray,

Thanks to our production team, Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.