Donald Trump’s niece has revealed a story that shows the president’s White House teardown is part of a generational propensity for “destruction.”
Mary Trump, who on Tuesday called her estranged uncle a “moron,” said the building of his “gaudy, obscenely expensive” $300 million ballroom can be traced back to something his father, Fred Trump, did 60 years ago.
Mary claims that Fred set up his son Freddy, her father, to be the face of a failing project, so he could save face. Freddy, then in his late 20s, was cast as the villain behind the destruction of a beloved landmark, Steeplechase Park, that was supposed to make way for a Trump development that was later scrapped.
This marked the start of “destructive tendencies” that her uncle later inherited, she said. “Throughout the years, the family’s destructive tendencies continue,” Mary wrote.
Offering some “family history” on her Substack, The Good in Us by Mary L. Trump, she told the story of her grandfather purchasing the site of the fairground, an iconic amusement park in Coney Island, in 1965.
Fred had eyeballed the site for another residential development in the style of Trump Village, an apartment complex built a year earlier.
However, failing to tap up his “old cronies” in the city administration, he palmed the project off to Mary’s father, Freddy. He did so knowing that it would fail and he would save face, even if that meant implicating his own son, Mary claimed. Freddy, however, snapped at the chance to prove himself, fronting the doomed project and eventually blaming himself for its failure.
Fred had bad blood because Freddy left the family business to become a pilot, even though he later returned. “My grandfather never forgave him for leaving the family business, especially since my dad was the oldest son and namesake, and, presumably, heir to the empire,” Mary wrote.
Freddy inherited the issues with approvals and zoning, as well as public pushback. With the issues persisting, Fred Sr. green-lit a bizarre farewell party for the park, featuring models in bathing suits, “and my grandfather wielding a sledgehammer,” Mary noted.
Visitors were invited to chuck bricks at the old windows around the much-loved site. The bricks, of course, had to be purchased and were launched through stained-glass windows bearing an image of the park’s iconic mascot, Tilly.
The optics were terrible, and the project was doomed.
“The entire spectacle was a disaster. Sentiment, nostalgia, and community were concepts my grandfather didn’t understand. But when those windows were broken at his behest, even he must have realized that he himself had gone too far,” Mary wrote.
She credited this “debacle” as the inspiration behind Fred never again funding an original construction project. She added that it created generational “destructive tendencies” that the president acquired.
She noted a New York Times piece about Trump, 79, tearing down the old Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to make way for his self-aggrandizing Trump Tower.
She said her uncle promised to preserve the treasured limestone friezes atop the old building, “but then went and jackhammered them into oblivion.”
“Actually, he infuriated those of us who care about beauty. Those friezes were art deco masterpieces and had been promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” she added.
“But because removing them properly would have held up construction for a day or two at the cost of about $30,000, Donald went back on his useless promise and destroyed them. That’s who he is; but at least we know he comes by it honestly—nothing that stands in their way is safe.”
She called the president Fred’s “talentless, arrogant middle son,” before adding that he is an ”anti-American traitor.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mary’s comments come as heavy machinery ripped down the 123-year-old East Wing of the Executive Mansion as part of work to make way for Trump’s gaudy ballroom.
She previously hit out at the renovation project last week on X, writing, “The White House belongs to the people. This is a desecration wholly supported by the Republican Party.”
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