Donald Trump's niece explains reasons he behaves the way he does

The self-described 'black sheep' of the Trump family shared her thoughts on where she believes the US President's controversial conduct stems from.

Donald Trump's niece made it clear there is no love lost between her and her estranged uncle when she made a series of explosive revelations in her bombshell book.

Mary Lea Trump's memoir offered an unprecedented insight into what being a member of one of the most notorious families in the world is really like...although her relatives vehemently disagreed with her version of events.

Before Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man hit the shelves in 2020 - while Donald was in office - the Trump family launched an unsuccessful legal challenge to block its release.

Its blurb explained that Mary detailed how 'specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office'.

Although the White House previously denied the explosive claims that she made, her words at least offer a unique perspective on the dynamic between the Trump brood.

Trump's niece shared a scathing assessment of her uncle in her 2020 memoir (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Mary is an open critic of her uncle and recently described him as 'an inept, depraved, compromised fraud' when discussing his decision to wage war on Iran.

The psychologist, author, and political commentator, 60, described Donald as a 'fraud and a bully' in the book, according to the BBC, while suggesting that he meets all the criteria for being a narcissist.

"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary wrote. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.

"He knows he has never been loved. His need for affirmation is so intense that nothing he does - or anyone says - is ever enough to fill the emptiness he feels inside."

But she reckons that we need to go a bit further back in the family tree to dig into the supposed source of her uncle's questionable behaviour.

Mary dubbed her grandfather and Donald's dad, Fred, a 'high-functioning sociopath' and claimed that the real estate developer took a hard line when it came to parenting his five children.

Mary Trump said her uncle's alleged 'narcissistic' tendencies trace back to his relationship with his parents (David Allen/Getty Images)

She alleged that the now-president was not raised to feel 'safe or loved', which led to him suffering 'deprivations that would scar him for life'.

In one passage, Mary wrote: "Having been abandoned by his mother for at least a year and having his father fail not only to meet his needs but to make him feel safe or loved, valued or mirrored, Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life [and acquired] personality traits [including] displays of narcissism, bullying, [and] grandiosity."

Donald’s niece said that the lack of caring parental figures in his life meant that his 'main source of comfort and human connection was taken from him' when he was younger.

According to Mary, as Donald's mother was often not around due to her health problems and his father was disinterested, the commander-in-chief developed 'powerful but primitive' coping mechanisms.

The 60-year-old, pictured in 2023, claimed that 'cruelty is a theme' in the Trump family (Johnny Nunez/WireImage)

She claimed that as his emotional needs weren't being met in these early years of his life, 'he became too adept at acting as though he didn’t have any'.

Another cutting line from Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man reads: "Cruelty is a theme in my family."

Despite boasting a PhD in clinical psychology and witnessing the alleged fallout from what she claimed was a strained dynamic between her relatives firsthand, Mary admitted she is still baffled by her uncle's behaviour.

"Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviours so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for," she concluded.

As I'm sure you can tell, Mary is anything but a chip off the old block.