[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and legnth]
What is it going to take to rebuild America? Luckily, we already have one of the things we need: massive majorities in both the House and the Senate, plus governorships, state legislatures, attorneys general, and more. The question is whether Democrats, newly energized and holding power that can translate into action, will use that power and this momentum to do everything we need to do. The goal is not only to protect us from the depredations of the Trump regime but to make this country what it has always needed to be.
Danielle Moodie: I have been speaking with folks all week long about whether or not America can be rebuilt, and I have been starting off all of these interviews with that question. So I will ask you, Mary, do you think that America can be rebuilt?
Mary Trump: Well, first of all, here is a hit. This is the first week in about 10 years that anybody has been allowed to ask me how I am, so that is a good place to start. My answer is an emphatic yes, with caveats and conditions. Clearly, this election gave us all real, grounded hope that we can turn this thing around. The results were overwhelming, and I think the reasons for them were multi-determined. This was not just about one or two things. Yes, it was a repudiation, a rebuke, et cetera, of the Trump regime and the Republican Party, but it was also a win for Democrats. Democrats did not just win because Republicans are so terrible. As for the caveats, we can move forward in the way this country needs to in order to become the kind of democracy it has always had the promise to be, but has never been, if we get the leaders we deserve.
We elected some of them to be in Congress. We elected many of them to be governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state, et cetera. But specifically in Congress, we need leaders unlike Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, leaders who will listen to the will of the people and perhaps even to the will of their own caucus. On the one hand, you have Jeffries saying, “We need to focus on affordability. We can’t do more than one thing at a time,” as if accountability and affordability are not closely related, or as if accountability is, as Schumer would have us believe, just some form of retribution, vengeance, or getting even. On the other hand, we have plenty of members of Congress saying, “Absolutely, we need to make things better for the American people and hold these criminals, traitors, and grifters accountable.” If that can happen, and if we get people in charge who have vision, who understand not just what is at stake but how to meet the moment, and who have the courage to make difficult choices on behalf of the American people, then we are in a much better position.
Danielle Moodie: It is like holding multiple emotions at one time, which is what I think we have all learned to do expertly over the last 10 years. I have these moments of great elation, excitement, and hopefulness, followed by great unease, grief, and, frankly, fear. My fear in this moment is not the continuation of the reign of cruelty we have seen from the Trump administration. My fear is that Democrats are going to squander this moment, and that the Democratic establishment, like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, who are taking a victory lap right now, had nothing to do with these historic wins. As a matter of fact, the candidates Schumer backed, overwhelmingly, and not just publicly but with access to tens of millions of dollars, all lost. Not only did they lose, but Haley Stevens showed us who she was on her way out the door. This was never about democracy, and it was never about working class people. For her, it was apparently always about Israel, and it was always about ensuring that a non-Muslim person would be the Senate leader in Michigan.
When we see this, it brings into question Chuck Schumer’s thought process. It brings into question whether he actually knows what he is doing, if he can get things wrong so many different times. On Hakeem Jeffries’s side, just a couple of weeks ago, he held a closed door meeting with Jared Kushner, a known grifter. Matthew Cole’s book, Princes and Thieves, and his article in Vanity Fair expose what many of us have known, which is that this man is bought and paid for by the Saudis, by MBZ, is a foreign agent, and is not operating in the best interest of anyone but Jared Kushner. Yet Hakeem Jeffries saw fit to talk about accountability with a multibillionaire whose father was in prison for fraud, was pardoned, and is now an ambassador. Everyone keeps telling us about the inevitability of their leadership, so, Mary, what power do you see the people having in this moment to hold Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries accountable?
Mary Trump: One thing we need to remember is that the momentum is on our side right now. The momentum, and the sheer number of extraordinary candidates that people like you helped get elected, is on our side, not Chuck Schumer’s. Chuck Schumer has such poor political instincts, or is so ossified, that he cannot get out of his own mold. He never endorsed Zohran Mamdani, which is an embarrassment. I do not know specifically whether Schumer or Jill Brown is responsible, but the DNC in general is why Angie Nixon lost. Angie Nixon was one of the best candidates out there, and she shaved that margin by 17 points from 2024 to 2026. If she had had a few million bucks from the DNC, she absolutely could have closed that gap. So thank you, Chuck. One thing we need to do is take advantage of the fact that so many of the people who are now going to be in Congress, in the House and the Senate, do not want Jeffries or Schumer to be leader.
Troy Jackson, the next senator from Vermont, has said openly, “Nope, he is not backing Schumer.” Chris Van Hollen, who is a senator right now, has said publicly that Schumer has to do X, Y, or Z or he should not be majority leader. He needs to go after these people. There needs to be accountability, and there needs to be all sorts of reform. I think Chris Van Hollen could have made a great leader. However, unfortunately, he has decided, at least so far, that preparing to run for president in 2028 is more important, which brings us back to one of your initial points. Are the Democrats going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again by making those kinds of choices? I think, though, that if we pressure our congresspeople and senators to pressure Jeffries and Schumer, or to pick other people to run against them and back them, then we can have a huge impact. Maybe not on making sure Jeffries is not Speaker and Schumer is not majority leader, but on making sure they do their jobs better. This clinging to the norms and the way things used to be is going to lead us down a very dark road. We will end up not back where we were a week ago, but in a much worse place.
Danielle Moodie: You, like me, are in New York City, and I want to go back to one of the points you made about Zohran Mamdani. Chuck Schumer did not endorse him, and still has not endorsed him, even though Mamdani has just finished his first year as mayor of New York City. In a lot of ways, Mamdani is being credited with the revolutionary wave we are experiencing in these midterm elections, because of his very clear vision for the city and his very clear ideas about how to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers. My question is how much of a model you see Mamdani being. Running a city and being a senator is very different. You have different opportunities and different access to things that could readily make people’s lives better. What do you see in the way he has maneuvered in New York City as a model for what these new, fresh voices in the House and the Senate can do?
Mary Trump: Yeah, I think there are a few things. First of all, we have direct evidence that he has been an excellent mayor thus far. Part of that is because he is committed to doing the right thing for the people of New York. He does not always do it the right way the first time out, but he is doing many good things for the city by, check this out, living up to his campaign promises.
Danielle Moodie: So crazy. So crazy. Such a crazy idea.
Mary Trump: Yeah. He is making it clear that he actually cares about making people’s lives better, and that it is not about him. It is not about his power or about making rich people richer. That is one of the things about this election in general, and it builds on how Mamdani has approached governance. Many people who are now going to be in the Senate and in Congress refused, absolutely refused, to throw the most vulnerable among us under the bus for political expedience, and they are not pulling any punches. You have Peggy Flanagan saying, “We are going to destroy ICE,” and saying, “I am not going to pretend that trans people don’t have the same rights as the rest of us.” Troy Jackson is not throwing trans people under the bus. The list of people who will not back down and who will demand real reform is impressive. I hope they will end the queasy, feckless, Democratic centrist attitude that says I need to go after the center right voter instead of looking after the interests of my base. That has to stop, and I think this election was a big flare that it is going to. It is a shot across the bow to the so-called centrist establishment Democrats.
Danielle Moodie: What it shows us, and I have said this many times, is that the establishment Democrats have been lying to us. They have told us over and over again that you cannot run a progressive candidate in the Midwest or in the South. I want to speak about the South for a moment, because I think this midterm cycle showed us that the South being written off as fully red has been a lie. It was a lie because what Democrats always needed was the infrastructure and the resources to build the kind of democratic power we are seeing now. Had they invested and adopted a 50 state mindset, instead of making the South a foregone conclusion for Republicans, we could have been witnessing a shifting of the map for many years.
Stacey Abrams has had her feet on the ground in Georgia for the last 15 years, and so many others have too, but I am lifting her up at this moment. That is how you get from the top of the ticket all the way down to Black women in Georgia. You do not get there overnight. I am curious what you think about the South in particular, now that people are waking up to the idea that the South was not a lost cause, but that Democrats had given up on it.
Mary Trump: Absolutely. It is such a good point. I would add rural areas everywhere, and the idea that they are just red forever. No, they are not. Look at some of these maps. They are grotesquely gerrymandered, and Republicans have used their power to create supermajorities in state legislatures, et cetera, et cetera. One of the problems you mentioned, and one we have had all along, is that every four years the entire infrastructure has to be rebuilt, because once the election is over, nobody is paying attention. Not nobody, but the powers that be, like the DNC.
Danielle Moodie: Yeah, the ones that have the money.
Mary Trump: Exactly. This is an object lesson in the importance of the work people like Stacey Abrams have been doing, and continue to do behind the scenes, for very little, if any, glory. We are the beneficiaries of that work. We also see that, as awful as the American electorate can be, and I give you 2016 and 2024, they are paying attention. I think this election was in part about what happens when you make up people’s minds for them or threaten a fundamental constitutional right. I think the Callais decision is in some ways directly responsible for the massive turnout of Black voters in the South. Pay attention, Democratic Party, and please, please start treating your base the way Republicans treat theirs, with the difference, of course, that the Republican base is a bunch of fascists, Christian nationalists, misogynists, and racists. The Democratic base is women, Black women in particular, who want this country to be a better place for everybody. They get shunted aside every time the election results are called, and that has to stop. The other thing we realize is that the mid-decade census thing and gerrymandering also backfired, because people do not like being told that they cannot make a choice, that their choice has been preordained by the Republican Party. So much about this election gave me hope. South Texas is a blue state, as Ted Cruz lamented.
Danielle Moodie: With a Latina governor.
Mary Trump: And I did not see that coming. I was pretty confident Keisha Lance Bottoms was going to win, but to have a Latina governor of Texas and a Black female governor of Georgia, oh my goodness gracious. And that is just the tip of this iceberg.
Danielle Moodie: What do you think we need to see on day one of this new Congress? We know the fickle nature of the American voter. I do not see visible change in the next two years, and the pendulum is going to swing right back to the right. So what are you looking to see, and what do you think needs to happen for there to be a true rebuilding of America?
Mary Trump: I think it needs to start immediately. They need to start having conversations about what their priorities are going to be. I do not want to hear about the first hundred days. I want to hear about the first day and the first week, and I want to see a plan. I want to see their list of priorities, and they need to demonstrate that immediately. I think members of Congress like Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia are having these conversations, and they are making the promise that they are indeed going to do more than one thing. They are going to focus on making the American people’s lives better, and they are going to make sure there is real accountability, not just for the foot soldiers, but for all of the people in power who have brought us to the brink of destruction and fascism.
Danielle Moodie: For me too, I am like, do not talk to me about the first 100 days. I want to know about the first hour. I actually want you to start priming us now, over the next several weeks. Here is my thing, and I want your thoughts. I said that the days following this election, leading up to the swearing in of the new Congress, could be the most violent time in modern American history, because Donald Trump and the people around him are wildly unhinged and erratic. We have no idea. I listened to Ron DeSantis following the results of the election, and this is what he said at a press conference:
Unless something changes in the next six weeks, this is going to be what it is.
He said that out loud at a presser, and I am like, unless what changes in the next six weeks? We have known, and both of us have talked about it on our own shows and together, that there are people around Donald Trump begging and pleading with him to institute martial law and to invoke the Insurrection Act. So what are you thinking needs to happen over the next six weeks? It is not just celebration parades from now until January. What do you think Democrats need to be paying attention to, and what do the American people as a whole need to be paying attention to over these next six weeks?
Mary Trump: Yeah. First of all, the election is over. We are back to work now, and obviously it feels better to be doing the work in the context of having won so comprehensively, but that is also a mitigating factor. The people in Donald’s orbit are very desperate, yes, but this victory was so massive that there is literally nothing they can do about it. Nothing is going to happen in the next six weeks to change the outcome. There are no lawsuits that matter. If somebody were to say this election was stolen, or that we need to declare martial law because the Democrats stole it or China stole it, nobody is going to take them seriously. That is what needed to happen in 2020. It was not enough for Donald to lose. The Republican Party had to lose in a huge way, and they did not. They outperformed him across the board. There is no getting around that, and I think it immunizes the country against any dastardly plans. We went into Tuesday thinking ICE was going to storm the polls, that people were going to get killed, and that there would be voter intimidation. The next day, there would be billions of lawsuits claiming none of that happened. What we need to worry about more than anything else is Donald’s psyche, because he is a wounded animal.
I am sorry to say this, but it should alarm everybody that he has gone kind of quiet. Right now he is talking about the ballroom and his decorating as a way to self-soothe, but as he keeps isolating, he is going to be stewing on all of this. He is going to be ruminating, and there is no way he can protect himself from the reality of what just happened. There is no way he can lie to himself convincingly enough to believe, with any real conviction, that he was not on the ballot. He told us he should be on the ballot.
Danielle Moodie: He told us he was on the ballot. Yep.
Mary Trump: Dozens of times. So he is still the President of the United States of America, I am sorry to say, and Republicans are still in control of everything because of our ridiculous system, for another two months. We need to keep an eye on him, certainly, and on what is happening around him in the executive branch. We also need the Democrats who are already in office to talk to us about how they plan to manage this. There is not much they can do now, but they can keep us informed. I do not think there is much we can do about Donald’s individual behavior, but with this loss, there are probably plenty of Republicans, civil servants, and people in the military who will be willing to make common cause with Democrats to make sure anything he does does not harm us irreparably. He is clearly not a well person, and his seeming weakness is what makes him more dangerous.
Danielle Moodie: Mary, I am so glad you said that, because I had said something similar, that Donald Trump right now is like a rabid dog against a wall. You know this better than anyone. His entire life, people have kissed the ring, kissed his feet, made excuses, and wanted to be next to him because of his position of power. Now we are witnessing people, one by one, around him beginning to jump ship. I wonder how he manages to deal with that reality, the emptying out of Mar-a-Lago, and the fact that he is no longer the loudest voice in the room. So, your final thoughts on that?
Mary Trump: As I have said many times, and as you certainly know, there is no such thing as worst with Donald. There is always worse. The more isolated he becomes, and the more all of this keeps crashing in on him, the more threatened he is going to feel. When the victory became obvious, and its size and extent became obvious, the first thing he did, seemingly uncharacteristically, was congratulate the Democrats, call it a totally free and fair election, and say they would work together. Then he held an Oval Office press availability with a red hat on his desk that says “veto.” So he is starting to realize, oh wait, I kind of want to make nice with them, because I do not want them to impeach me or investigate me. But this is a narcissistic injury the likes of which we have never seen before. He is going to do everything in his power to dilute himself into believing that everything is fine and that he is still powerful, which means he is going to try to start exercising some power. That is where it gets scary, because the only things he can do at this point are in the realm of foreign policy. We are at war with Iran because of him, he has this unhealthy obsession with nuclear power, and Republicans up to now have shown literally zero willingness to rein him in. We just need to be prepared for all contingencies and watch him, because this is a very treacherous state of mind he is in right now. He is a malignant narcissist who was just told, in the loudest and most public way imaginable, that he is a loser.
Danielle Moodie: Wow. That is a powerful note to end on, Mary. All right.
Mary Trump: Thank you Danielle
Thank you for the transcript of your conversation. Trump is started up with people crossing the border in Mexico. Danielle is a genius when it comes to figuring out the landscape of politics as are you.
My wife and I live in NYC. Our mayor has been able to keep his campaign promises because Gov. Hochul has been giving him the money he needs.