Fred Trump III: ‘Donald was the kind of child who could drive almost anyone around the bend’

I have a name – Trump – that is extraordinarily polarising, and keeps getting more so. Up until now, I have stayed quiet, even as those around me took their potshots. But silence is golden only when there is nothing that needs to be said.

So where did the cruelty in the Trump family come from? I’ve wrestled with that question for years. Who planted the seeds of narcissism? How did Trump loyalty become such a one-way street? Were all the outsized achievements in spite of these complicated relationships… or because of them? And what does all this mean for my generation of Trumps – my cousins Donald Jr, Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany, Barron, and David, my sister Mary, and me – and our children?

My father’s father, Fred Sr, was the Trump who first defined what it meant to be a Trump. He lived what could only be called a prosperous life. Having worked since he was a skinny 10-year-old, he’d risen to the pinnacle of the New York property world, ending up with a stunning portfolio that included scores of high-rise apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens. He had political juice and was known everywhere he went. But he had a terrible relationship with my father, who blamed him for ruining his life.

It was one of those can’t-live-together, can’t-live-apart situations. But it was my father, his namesake, who died just shy of his 43rd birthday. So, who paid the ultimate price?

My grandfather wasn’t the easiest man to get along with. After all the tense holiday dinners I’d sat through at my grandparents’ colonial mansion in Queens, I knew. He was an old-style patriarch, presiding over a large, rambunctious family, whose members he managed to dominate and sometimes pit against each other.

There was no doubt that he had amassed a stunning list of accomplishments, along with a fortune worth at least a couple of hundred million dollars. And you can’t explain the personalities of any of his five children without knowing what he did for – and to – each of them.

Maryanne, the whip-smart but often cruel eldest child, whose public achievements as an attorney and federal judge were matched by her constant carping within the family. My father, Fred Trump Jr, the charming black-sheep first son, whose free-spirited rejection of the family business was taken as a character flaw almost as severe as his self-destructive impulses and his alcoholism. Elizabeth, the quiet middle child, who did everything she could to avoid the spotlight. The youngest, Robert, the chameleon brother, who landed on one side or another of each family drama, depending on who appeared to be ascendant. And the hard-charging Donald, the one most like their father, whose ferocious ambition and drive had to compensate for a lack of compassion and subtlety.

In a family that could sometimes seem like the cast of a 1950s sitcom, Donald’s role was as the obnoxious one. Many of Donald’s adult traits – his determination, his short fuse – first displayed themselves in childhood. He learned early that he could get away with things. Stupid kid stuff at first.

Taking toys from other children. Throwing cake at a birthday party.

So much has already been said about my uncle’s tumultuous boyhood, I don’t want to repeat all that. But I know my family well enough to grasp how the five siblings got formed by an unyielding father and also by each other.

They were always testing each other. One memorable day when Donald was being particularly obnoxious, my dad decided to do something. He knew how much his little brother hated snakes. He also knew that their neighbourhood was crawling with them. It didn’t take long to find a garter snake in the backyard, long but harmless.

Freddie snuck into Donald’s bedroom while he was taking a bath. And he dropped the snake right into his little brother’s unmade bed. Even their mother, down in the kitchen, could hear the screams from Donald.

If that prank sounds immature, it was. But Donald was the kind of child who could drive almost anyone around the bend.

By 1959, my grandfather shipped him off to the New York Military Academy, a place of order and rules. Donald seemed to take to it with barely a complaint. My father Freddie was at college by this point and one of his biggest admirers was his younger brother. In his room at the academy, Donald had a photo of his older brother standing next to an aeroplane.

Donald was still at the academy when my father married my mother, Linda. It was 1962. They settled in New York and that November, I was born, but late the following year my father shocked everyone by announcing he was leaving the family company. He’d been accepted into the TWA pilot training programme in Kansas City.

The days were long. The standards high. During that time my father’s drinking first got out of hand. He often started with a beer, then began pouring hard liquor. Scotch whisky mostly.

One weekend, Donald and Robert came up; by now my father was training in Massachusetts. They’d been sent by Fred Sr to deliver their older brother back to New York. ‘This is ridiculous,’ Donald told him. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

Donald passed along a comment their father had supposedly made, saying airline pilots were no more than ‘flying bus drivers’. Is that what did it? Was it pressure from the family? Was it some doubt inside my father’s head? Or was it the lingering grip of alcohol? But in the end, it was the booze that grounded my father’s high-flying dream. Before he was a full-fledged pilot, TWA sent him home.

Half my childhood, it seemed, unfolded at my grandparents’ house. Dinners once a week. Riding my bike over there to drink Cokes with my grandmother. Once my parents separated, I was there more than ever.

One day, Rob, Donald and I were sitting on the sofa. The TV was on, and Donald said: ‘Hey, Fred. Hit Rob.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, hit Rob. Just hit him.’

I don’t think Rob was paying much attention. But I shrugged, ‘OK’, and punched Rob in the arm. He looked surprised. Then, he slapped me across the face. Hard. I couldn’t believe he’d just done that.

Honestly, it was like a Three Stooges episode. The Three Trumps. Donald was laughing so hard, he had to catch his breath.

With Donald, almost everything had to be a competition. One day, he and my cousin David were playing catch. Just a friendly game. That’s what David thought. But as the baseball went back and forth, Donald started throwing harder. Until he was firing rockets at his nephew. Then, one hit the tip of David’s glove and bounced off his forehead, sending my cousin straight to the grass.

Maryanne came running over, mad. ‘He’s just a kid,’ she yelled. Donald wasn’t apologetic at all. ‘That’s what the glove is for.’

That was Uncle Donald. To him, a win was a win was a win, whether or not the other person even knew the game was on.

My father’s drinking was getting worse. He decided to give rehab a try. I got a postcard he sent the day he arrived, saying he was doing great. The next day he left. It was heartbreaking. It was like he had given up.

‘Your dad couldn’t do it,’ Donald said the next time I saw him. That was true, though I’m still not sure why he felt the need to rub it in.

Soon after, my father and I were in the car. I was driving him back to my grandparents’ house, where he was staying, and I will never forget what he said: ‘You know, you have inherited a bad gene.’

I didn’t know what he meant at first but he added: ‘You have to be very careful about drinking.’

I was still 17 but I never thought that drinking was my father’s main problem. His issues went deeper. There was all that stuff with his father and his middle brother and all the expectations inside the family. The fact that he’d never been able to find his own way.

He died in September 1981. He was 42. The official cause was a heart attack, as a result of alcoholism.

There was a low-key wake, followed by cold cuts at my grandparents’ house. Donald and his then-wife Ivana stopped at the supermarket and brought some platters back.

Everyone was quiet, and not a lot of tears. I was standing in the back at the funeral home with Donald and Robert when Donald said: ‘Why don’t you say something, pal?’ I was taken aback by the last-minute suggestion. To me, that showed how little thought his siblings had given to the details of the service. ‘None of you are going to say anything?’ I got two nods.

‘Fine,’ I said. What I thought was… you don’t have the balls?

I didn’t say that, but I can’t deny the anger.

By the time I married my wife Lisa in 1989, Donald was becoming more famous. Ahead of our wedding he had someone call the church to see if there was a spot nearby to land a helicopter. He was going to Atlantic City afterwards for the Miss America pageant.

By then, plenty of people recoiled at the Trump name. I worked in property and had accounts I was pulled from, deals where I was told, ‘Stay in the background.’ There were clients that would not deal with someone named Trump.

All families have baggage. But some days, it felt like I was hauling around a steamer trunk.

Then, in 1999, things changed overnight. My grandfather died and the day after his funeral, our youngest son William was born. When he had a seizure, doctors warned there could be a serious issue with his brain. Our lives became a mad dash of doctor visits, tests… It would be 15 years before genetic testing could pinpoint the cause of his seizures: a KCNQ2 mutation.

Four months after William was born, Mary and I were asked to go and see Irwin Durben, one of my grandfather’s lawyers. Irwin didn’t try to soft-pedal. ‘You’re out,’ he said. ‘Your aunts and your uncles say your grandfather’s wishes had changed.’ In a revised will, we were no longer in line to receive our father’s share of our grandfather’s estate – as our cousins would eventually receive their parents’ shares. Instead, the portion of the estate allotted to Fred Sr’s children would largely be divided among his four living children; Mary and I would get nothing but a single payment of $200,000, the same token set aside for each of the Trump grandchildren.

We were stunned. Towards the end of his life, my grandfather had dementia and was in no condition to be making financial decisions.

As the legalities around my grandfather’s estate began to unfold, Uncle Robert was sent our way. Over the years, he had become the Fredo of the family. (Like the dim brother in The Godfather who was handed the least pleasant tasks.)

‘Are you ready to sign the papers?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I told him.

‘You really should sign.’

‘Tell whoever you need to tell. I’m not signing.’

Later I got a call from Donald. We hadn’t heard from him since William was born. ‘Pal,’ he said brightly. ‘You should have called me. You and I, we could have worked this out.’

From his tone, Donald left the strong impression that he didn’t know anything about the bitter back-and-forth that had been underway for months. That seemed preposterous.

‘So, what do you have in mind exactly?’ I asked.

‘It’s too late now,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do. I just wish you’d called me.’

There must have been a reason for his call, but I’ve never been able to figure out what it was.

After we filed the probate lawsuit, a letter arrived at our house from an attorney. Our medical insurance was being cut off. It felt like a punch in the face. My entire life, I’d received insurance through a family policy that my grandfather provided.

Of all the cruel, low-down, vicious, heartless things my relatives could do, this was worse than anything I could imagine. Which, I suppose, was the point.

I had an infant son, desperately in need of medical care as he fought for his life, and my closest relatives had decided to kick him – and us – to the curb. If this wasn’t evil, I couldn’t say what might qualify.

Fortunately a judge ruled that the Trump family must continue paying for the insurance until the wider matter was resolved.

My grandfather never said anything to me about changing his will. My lawyer was eager to quiz Donald, Maryanne and Robert. It seemed clear to me they had played some role in getting my grandfather to change it. According to our lawyers, our whole case could hang on our ability to pin that down.

Donald went into the conference room for his deposition with a grim look. But when he was done, he stopped and said hello. ‘You know,’ he said to Mary and me, ‘your mother is the reason your father started drinking.’ It was classic Donald: feeling frustrated and lashing out.

After the depositions, the settlement talks seemed to heat up. I was open to this if we could come up with a fair result. I hated fighting with my relatives. Mary was understanding. But she was also in a different position. It never got testy between us but our responses to the case were different. ‘I have to end this,’ I finally said.

We signed the deal in April 2001. Part of it involved a confidentiality agreement. Let me put it like this: it was better than where we started. But it was nowhere near a one-fifth split.

Mary would continue the battle for years. I get all that. I love my sister. But for me it was time to move on.

‘Donald would like you to be an honorary member at Briarcliff.’ A year after the lawsuit I got a phone message from Donald’s assistant. My uncle was developing an old golf course, a 30-minute drive from our house in Connecticut.

It was clearly a gesture but I wasn’t sure how I should respond. With Donald, it was hard to assume there were no other agendas.

I gave it 24 hours. ‘Tell him I’ll do it – but only if I can play a round of golf with him first.’

I was nervous as I drove there. Donald greeted me with his usual, ‘Hey, pal.’ It still felt weird being with him, but not as weird as I feared.

It was only as I was saying goodbye that we got to what I had to assume was the reason I was there. Donald took a short breath, then said: ‘It’s over, right? We’re through.’

I took that to mean the lawsuit is over. Like, that was strictly business. That wasn’t really how I saw my life, as just another negotiation. To me, it had felt personal. But you can’t live in that anger for ever. ‘Sure,’ I told him.

Then, he gave me a hug. I’m not sure I’d ever gotten one of those before. Afterwards he turned to me: ‘Your lawyer never should have said that thing about your grandfather’s toupée.’

During Donald’s deposition, a lawyer had supposedly been making a point about Grandpa’s declining mental state and described his almost comical toupée. That exchange happened behind the closed doors. But I knew how sensitive Donald was on the subject of men and their hairstyles. Of all the things that might have lingered in my uncle’s mind, the one he couldn’t shake was this.

It wasn’t easy getting back to being a normal family. (Wait, the Trumps were never a normal family. We were far too colourful and complicated for that.)

My sister and I were kept firmly on the outside. Holidays, weddings, celebrations – those were the times I most wished things were different.

As he got older William began suffering seizures again. This was terrifying. The bills for his care were becoming a burden.

In January 2009, I went to see Donald to talk about money.

‘So, what’s the problem with him, anyway?’ Donald asked. ‘Like what’s wrong with him?’

‘The doctors don’t know exactly,’ I said, ‘but it’s some kind of genetic thing.’

‘Not in our family,’ Donald shot back. ‘There’s nothing wrong with our genes.’

Later Maryanne called me, saying that the siblings were setting up a medical fund for William. ‘Can you and Lisa come to my apartment and go out to dinner with me?’ she added.

I was worried that she might have called for this dinner to unload anger – it would be the first time I’d seen her since the depositions – but the minute Lisa and I walked in Maryanne started crying. She didn’t only seem glad to see us. She seemed to feel guilt.

Slowly, we were patching this family back together.

I had no vote on the escalator ride of 16 June, 2015, when Donald launched his presidential campaign. No one in the family did. But I think everyone had an opinion. Maryanne was highly sceptical. With his bombastic personality and shifting views, she wondered if her little brother really was ‘presidential material’.

The question of judicial nominations was bound to come up. Donald caused some heavy buzz by touting Maryanne to the media. But the whole time, she was telling me what a terrible president he would make. His simple-minded slogans, his lack of knowledge and curiosity about serious issues. ‘Can you believe this s—t he’s saying?’ she snapped when we were discussing Donald’s comments about the southern border. ‘It’s abhorrent.’

The election had hit home for Lisa and me too. We woke one morning to find dead chickens strewn across our lawn, presumably by people who hated my uncle. The message would become more apparent with more dead animals at the bottom of our driveway.

On Tuesday 8 November, 2016, America voted. This was surreal. As I stood with my ballot, I filled in the little circle for president and I respectfully voted for Hillary Clinton.

I was a Trump voting for a Clinton. Strange. But it wasn’t personal. I just didn’t agree with many of the things Donald was running on.

He never asked me how I was voting. Knowing Donald, he likely simply assumed I’d voted for him.

Lisa, our elder children Andrea and Cristopher, and I were invited to the inauguration. The night before, there was a lavish candlelight dinner at Union Station. We sat one table over from Donald, Melania and his children. ‘Why don’t we wish him well,’ I said.

The four of us stood but a Secret Service agent was blocking our path, glaring. ‘That guy is my uncle,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to say hi.’ Then Melania noticed us and tapped Donald.

After a round of ‘congratulations’ and ‘thank you’, Donald leaned in toward me. ‘Can you believe this f—kin’ shit?’

Today, as he is on the brink of another term in the White House, a new generation is coming along in our family. My children’s generation. Whether Maryanne was or wasn’t cruel, what Donald did or should have done, the fact that Grandpa looked down on Freddie’s high-flying dreams – those were the dramas that defined earlier decades. They don’t need to define our future. Let it rest.

Over the past couple of years, I have made some changes, propelled by my role as a father. I have begun to face an issue I’d been avoiding. Alcohol. I think my father was right: we really may have ‘a bad gene’ in this family.

As for William, on my deathbed, I will still be wondering if I have done enough. Did I do everything I possibly could have? That’s what families do, right?

In ways large and small, for better and for worse, we remain tied to each other through it all. Wherever life takes us, I will always be a Trump.

Abridged extract from All in the Family by Fred C Trump III, which is out on 30 July (Simon & Schuster, £25); pre-order here at Telegraph Bookshop

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