The Black Hole of Need

In Conversation with Sydney Blumenthal

[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and length]

Mary Trump: I sat down with Sidney Blumenthal, a journalist and contributor at Legal AF, and we had a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation about, of course, Donald’s continuing decline and what that means for the ways in which the Republican Party continues to allow him to bend them to his will.

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Sidney Blumenthal: Welcome to the Court of History, Mary.

Mary Trump: Thanks, Sidney. It’s great to be here, as always. Yes, there is a lot going on, and I would add that we’re also on a precipice and a knife’s edge. Although, it kind of feels like we’ve been there for a while.

Sidney Blumenthal: I was talking to my friend James Carville this morning, and he said:

Donald has always been crazy. We know he’s mad, but is the deterioration accelerating, and how fast?

Mary Trump: I think that’s a really good and important point to underscore. This isn’t a different guy. This isn’t somebody who’s suddenly becoming a worse person or a more unhinged person. You see some of Donald’s former allies trying to distance themselves from him by saying, “He’s not the guy I knew.” Yes, he is. He’s been exactly the same person for decades.

What we’re seeing now is the perfect storm of cognitive, psychological, and physical decline simply revealing who he is in a way that’s making it more obvious for people who either haven’t been paying attention or, for their own reasons, wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he was something he wasn’t. So yes, the decline is worsening, and that’s simply what happens.

If we look at it purely in terms of his psychiatric disorders, these are longstanding, untreated, undiagnosed conditions. When you don’t treat an illness, it worsens over time. The psychological deterioration is also being accelerated by the combination of cognitive and physical decline. He’s 80 years old, and he’s not healthy.

Alzheimer’s runs in my family. My grandfather had Alzheimer’s, and his symptoms began worsening in his early eighties. He was also physically healthier than Donald is.

Sidney Blumenthal: Donald loves strongmen, and he loves to be seen as a strongman himself. He loves to cozy up to Vladimir Putin and stand beside Xi Jinping. He talked endlessly about the love letters he received from Kim Jong Un. Now, however, he’s encountered actual strongmen who are defeating him. This must be a tremendous shock to him.

Mary Trump: Oh, it’s unthinkable. I don’t know that he can grapple with it on a conscious level, which is exactly why he’s becoming increasingly desperate. He’s trying to do several things simultaneously: change the subject, change the narrative, and somehow manufacture a win.

What I find fascinating is that, because of the ways in which he admires and makes himself subservient to so called strongmen, he reveals just how weak he actually is. It reminds me of one of the fundamental truths about Donald that people need to understand. Actually, there are two.

The first is that the thing he fears most is humiliation. And right now, he’s being humiliated on a daily basis by the consequences of the very things he chose to do, from the ridiculous, like the reflecting pool, to something as catastrophic as the war with Iran.

Deep down, he is now, just as he has always been, a terrified little boy. Everything he does is driven by fear and by a desperate need to avoid humiliation.

Sidney Blumenthal: He posts all kinds of bizarre things, as he always has. They tend to fall into a few different categories. One is humiliating other people because that supposedly makes him look strong. Another is portraying himself as a superhero, a He Man, the embodiment of exaggerated masculinity.

One of the latest examples was produced by the White House itself, which now seems to publish AI generated images almost every day. They released what looked like a movie poster depicting Donald as Superman, wearing a red cape on top of Mount Rushmore while rescuing a falling George Washington. The subtitle read:

Donald X Washington: A Time Travel Epic

Interestingly, Abraham Lincoln had been erased from Mount Rushmore.

Mary Trump: Of course he had, because apparently slavery never happened. That’s the story they want people to believe.

Some of this is so absurd that we almost have to laugh. The AI generated material is completely deranged and deeply delusional.

This is another thing that distinguishes Donald from actual strongmen. Vladimir Putin certainly has his own carefully cultivated image of masculinity, but genuine authoritarian leaders are not deferential to one another unless doing so advances their interests. Nor are they constantly engaged in these bizarre fantasies of portraying themselves as superheroes or whatever Donald imagines himself to be.

What is truly dangerous, however, is the extreme disinformation and the lengths these people are willing to go to erase our history. They have enormous power to convince people not to believe what they see with their own eyes or to trust the historical record as it actually exists.

I think this is also one of the ways the people surrounding Donald manipulate him. They understand his narcissism and his profound insecurities. He’ll approve almost anything as long as he’s getting what he wants in return. Right now, what he wants most is adulation, compliments, power, and money. Mostly money, but the rest matters to him too.

Sidney Blumenthal: Let’s also talk about the plunder.

It has been widely reported that Donald has accumulated an extraordinary amount of wealth while in office, in apparent violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Thank you, Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court.

For the first time in his life, Donald seems to have found a business model that actually works. Throughout his career, he failed repeatedly as a businessman. He declared multiple bankruptcies, and business simply never worked out for him until he discovered that he could use the presidency for personal enrichment.

Mary Trump: That’s exactly right.

This is what happens when somebody who is utterly incompetent and incapable of succeeding in business is continually enabled.

My grandfather created this monster. Throughout his lifetime, he gave Donald approximately $410 million just to keep him afloat and preserve the myth that Donald was some brilliant, self made entrepreneurial genius.

Then the banks stepped in.

After that, Mark Burnett rehabilitated his image.

Sidney Blumenthal: He reinvented Donald and created the illusion that he was Manhattan’s greatest business winner.

Mary Trump: Exactly.

In reality, by then Donald was the biggest loser around. He couldn’t even borrow money from New York banks anymore.

He received approximately $410 million from my grandfather, and by the time my grandfather died, virtually all of it was gone because Donald is so profoundly inept. Then he inherited another $170 million.

By the time Mark Burnett came along, Donald was once again desperate for money.

That’s how bad he is at business.

Thanks to a corrupt Republican Party and, as you mentioned, John Roberts, Donald has stumbled onto an entirely new business model: using the presidency to enrich himself.

It’s disgusting.

His children, despite having accomplished very little on their own, are now making obscene amounts of money as well.

It’s important to remember that Donald isn’t succeeding because he’s suddenly become competent. He’s succeeding because countless people have helped him corruptly exploit the presidency for personal gain.

That should never have been allowed to happen.

Too many people have either looked the other way or benefited themselves.

It’s another reminder that when Democrats return to power, there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done to ensure this level of corruption can never happen again.

There are already laws against this behavior.

The question is: where is the enforcement?

It’s despicable.

Sidney Blumenthal: Donald gave an amazing speech. He always gives amazing speeches because they’re so self revealing without being self aware.

He was campaigning in Michigan the other day, speaking to a group of auto workers, and he told them:

I’ve done more for you than your parents.

There’s a lot wrapped up in that statement, especially when you think about his own parents, his own parenting, what his sons, daughter, and son in law are doing now, and what’s happening to ordinary Americans at the same time. It also reflects his projection of himself as the nation’s father figure.

Mary Trump: Yes, because he’s been such a great father.

It’s a very odd thing to say under any circumstances. What we’re seeing increasingly, however, and this is a difference of degree rather than kind, is that Donald has always been self aggrandizing and obsessed with being recognized for qualities he simply doesn’t possess.

Now, though, his rhetoric has become far more all encompassing. It’s no longer enough for him to claim that he’s the greatest leader who has ever lived or that he knows more than the generals. He now insists he knows more about Middle Eastern history than anyone who has ever lived. Apparently, he’s also become the platonic ideal of a parent.

He’s inserting himself into every conceivable role and making it clear that what he most wants is recognition for simply existing. It echoes what he said back in 2016, that he alone could fix everything. Now he alone can deliver everything to the American people, including being a better parent than their own parents.

It’s deeply bizarre, but it’s entirely consistent with the rhetoric we’ve heard from him over the past decade.

The difference now is that much of what used to be intentional political messaging has become something he genuinely seems to believe. Because so much is going wrong around him, and because he cannot confront any of it, he’s desperately trying to fill what I often describe as the black hole of need inside himself with these preposterous narratives, hoping everyone else will believe them too.

Sidney Blumenthal: There’s another aspect to that statement as well.

When he says, “I’ve done more for you,” he’s placing himself above people’s own families and positioning himself as the most important figure in their lives.

Meanwhile, everyone knows that he’s run the economy into the ground. They know he’s broken his promises, and they know he’s mired in a losing war that he has no idea how to end.

Yet here he is presenting himself as the all powerful father figure, almost as though he were the father of the country itself. After all, according to that AI image, he’s even rescuing George Washington.

Mary Trump: Who I thought was supposed to be the father of our country.

Apparently Donald is also saving Mount Rushmore from communists, which is very generous of him.

The reality is that everybody, or at least almost everybody, knows what’s actually happening. There are certainly people who remain deeply deluded, and if you’re still willing to attend one of Donald’s rallies at this point, you might want to spend some time reflecting on that.

People know that everything is more expensive now. They know gasoline costs more, groceries cost more, and inflation is rising.

They know he led us into what could very well become a forever war after promising countless times that he would never do such a thing.

They also know he promised to release the Epstein files before doing everything in his power to prevent their release.

I don’t think Donald himself came up with this strategy, but the people surrounding him, Steven Miller, Russ Vought, and others, have once again manufactured a new boogeyman to frighten the base because fear has always been how they maintain control.

Right now, it’s communism, just as it’s always immigrants.

That, too, reflects desperation.

Tragically, they also understand that these tactics often work, particularly when everything else is going badly.

The campaign against transgender children is a perfect and horrifying example of how far they are willing to go to manufacture entirely fictional fears in order to distract from everything else they’re doing.

Sidney Blumenthal: Donald recently posted on Truth Social an image showing the face of Dylan Mulvaney placed onto the body of CNN’s Caitlan Collins, whom he has repeatedly attacked, including at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

For Donald, equating someone with being transgender is the harshest insult he can imagine. It’s the way he attacks members of the press while simultaneously trying to stigmatize an entire group of people.

What does that reveal about his own fears and insecurities surrounding sexuality?

Mary Trump: It’s interesting because I honestly don’t think Donald spent much time thinking about these issues before 2015.

I don’t think he particularly cared one way or the other. I could certainly be wrong, but I never saw evidence of it.

Obviously, the way he treated Roy Cohn after Roy was diagnosed with AIDS was appalling. But I think that reflected Donald’s fear of AIDS more than anything related to sexuality itself.

Not that Roy Cohn deserves much sympathy. He was a monster who played a significant role in shaping the person Donald became.

Ultimately, I think this reflects Donald’s deeply unconscious belief, something so frightening to him that he’ll never consciously confront it, that he is fundamentally damaged.

There is so much wrong with him.

He is the opposite of everything he claims to be.

He’s weak. He’s pathetic. He’s not intelligent.

At this point, I honestly struggle to identify any redeeming qualities.

That underlying sense of wrongness increases his need to attack people who are vulnerable, marginalized, or simply different from him because doing so temporarily makes him feel better about himself.

The same dynamic applies to his business failures.

On some level, however unconscious, he knows he failed as a businessman. That’s why he goes to extraordinary lengths to enrich himself through any means available, even illegitimate ones.

Unfortunately, he now possesses enormous power, and many of the people closest to him use that power to advance their own agendas, including Steven Miller’s profoundly fascistic agenda targeting immigrants.

Sidney Blumenthal: This discussion about transgender people really opens up a broader conversation about Donald’s historical relationship with gay people.

He lived in Manhattan during a period when gay culture was flourishing openly, particularly in the downtown clubs. He spent a great deal of time in those clubs. While he was pursuing models, he was also socializing with many gay people because that was simply part of the culture.

He was certainly afraid of AIDS because of his own lifestyle, but he also seemed comfortable within many aspects of gay culture.

I found it interesting that, at the most recent Kennedy Center Honors, he presented an award to Gloria Gaynor, who is an enduring gay icon because of her anthem, I Will Survive, which became so closely associated with the AIDS era.

His supporters probably don’t recognize those cultural references, but Donald certainly does.

It’s a very strange contradiction.

Mary Trump: It certainly is.

Just think about the Village People. YMCA seems to be at the top of every playlist he uses.

Sidney Blumenthal: And, of course, his little dance whenever it plays.

Mary Trump: Let’s not put that image back into everyone’s head.

Donald is nothing if not a hypocrite and an opportunist.

As I said, I never really saw evidence that he had strong feelings about these issues years ago. Granted, it wasn’t exactly a topic of conversation around the Thanksgiving table during the 1980s.

My family was certainly misogynistic and racist. I also know enough to say that many members of my family were homophobic.

But I never saw that specifically in Donald.

As you pointed out, he spent time in circles where he interacted with many gay people. People sometimes forget that Donald once wanted to become a Broadway producer. You simply cannot spend time in or around that industry while simultaneously being virulently opposed to the people who make it what it is.

It’s simply another example of how willing he is to become whatever is politically useful.

Sidney Blumenthal: Let me put it this way. Do you think it’s fair to say that Donald is publicly homophobic while privately something quite different?

Mary Trump: The level of homoeroticism in the way Donald interacts with and talks about certain men is remarkably revealing.

Just as he wasn’t always anti choice, his positions have shifted whenever it became politically advantageous.

At this point, though, it’s difficult to know what Donald genuinely believes because I think he’s gone from knowingly lying to actually believing many of the things that come out of his own mouth.

Either way, it’s cynical.

Either way, it’s dangerous.

And the people who suffer most are some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

Sidney Blumenthal, journalist and political operative