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By Chloe Mayer
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Few U.S. politicians have been as controversial and divisive a figure as former President Donald Trump, who has no shortage of critics—and one of his biggest detractors is a member of his own family.
Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, 58, has made no secret of the fact that she believes her 77-year-old uncle is "unfit" for public office, despite being related to him. For his part, Donald Trump has slammed his niece and dismissed her as "a mess" who barely knew him.
Mary Trump was largely unknown among the public before her takedowns of her famous uncle garnered national attention. But her public profile has steadily grown alongside his as he rose to power from the boardroom to the White House. She has slammed the former president in print and over the airwaves and has subsequently developed a massive presence on social media with an exponential jump in followers over the past few years.
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Her late father, Fred Trump Jr., who died at 42 in 1981, was Donald Trump's older brother. Fred Trump Jr. was the eldest child of real estate mogul Fred Trump Sr., but the pair fell out when he pursued a career as an airline pilot instead of remaining in the family business; younger brother Donald Trump subsequently inherited the firm.
Psychologist and author Mary Trump says she is the anonymous source who provided The New York Times with the Trump family's tax returns for an investigative article that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. The piece alleged that Donald Trump had engaged in tax avoidance schemes and had inherited much of his wealth.
But by the following year, Mary Trump was happy to go on the record and published an unauthorized biography of Donald Trump in 2020 called Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. Another uncle, Robert Trump, had tried to block the book's release but was ultimately unsuccessful. The book sold almost 1 million copies on its first day of sales.
In the book, Mary Trump claimed that "dehumanization of people was commonplace" within the family and used her psychology background to question whether her uncle could have narcissistic personality disorder.
Donald Trump dismissed the allegations and hit back.
"Mary Trump, a seldom seen niece who knows little about me, says untruthful things about my wonderful parents (who couldn't stand her!) and me, and violated her NDA [nondisclosure agreement]," Trump wrote on Twitter at the time. "She's a mess! Many books have been written about me, some good, some bad. Both happily and sadly, there will be more to come!"
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She went on to host a podcast called The Mary Trump Show. It made headlines when she pulled it from Spotify last February in protest at the platform hosting a show by podcaster Joe Rogan, who she accused of spreading Covid-19 disinformation.
But her reach as Donald Trump's fiercest critic is perhaps greatest across her social media channels, where her rise in popularity and influence can most easily be measured.
According to Social Blade, a social media analytics website, she had 35,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter) in September 2020, while today, her total stands at 1.6 million followers. However, her stats are still dwarfed by her uncle's, who boasts more than 87 million followers on X, despite the fact he no longer posts on the platform—preferring instead to post on Truth Social.
Newsweek reached out to Mary Trump through her social media pages, and to Donald Trump's spokesperson via email for comment.
Mary Trump's X posts almost exclusively focus on her uncle, with a recent message on November 16 reading: "I'm taking the gloves off to expose Donald with inside info before he destroys Democracy!"
The day before, she'd posted that "my uncle is unfit to be in the White House or anywhere but prison." Another recent message on October 4 referred to a regular newsletter she writes.
She said: "Can you help me get under Donald's skin? As Donald's business is crashing down, my newsletter is blowing up. I'm only 384 subs away from 89,000. Can you help me reach my record by midnight?!" That post was shared 3,500 times.
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And her appeal for more readers appears to have been successful. She currently has over 120,000 subscribers on Substack, where she mainly posts about the former president. She describes herself on the site as a "mom, writer, liberal progressive, pro-democracy American."
The family row has not just been confined to social media, though.
It grew even more toxic—and headed into court—when Mary Trump accused Donald Trump and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance. The former president defeated her claims in a lawsuit in November last year.
Mary Trump's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said her client found the decision "disappointing," while the former president's lawyer, James Kiley, said justice had been served "despite the plaintiff's thinly veiled attempt to try the case in public and politicize her cause."
Donald Trump had also tried to sue his niece and The New York Times over the tax returns story, but his case was thrown out of court in January this year.
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