ALL IN THE FAMILY

Another Trump unburdens himself.

Grandson of the family’s founder and nephew of the current Republican presidential candidate, Fred C. Trump III doesn’t share MAGA politics but claims to be on good terms with his uncle. He attended the 2017 inauguration, visited the White House several times, and is invited to many, if not all, Trump family affairs. He maintains, not always successfully, that this is an overview of his family and life independent of his “polarizing" uncle. Donald is a major supporting character throughout, but this is also a believable memoir of Fred, now 61, who has managed a successful career outside the Trump organization but remains a member in fairly good standing of the toxic clan. He grew up in an already vast real estate empire ruled by his tyrannical grandfather who left behind four living children, including the president-to-be, who was already taking charge. A fifth sibling, the author’s alcoholic father, who hated working for the grandfather, died in 1981. Except for being rich, Fred’s early life was unremarkable. His accounts of other family members reveal a mixed bag, and the future president is recognizable even from childhood as self-centered and brash. Never part of the inner circle, the author does not delve deeply into Trump business details but regularly digresses to describe his uncle’s behavior—generally cruel, malicious, and even racist but occasionally, unpredictably generous. But this is, in the end, the author’s story, and while readers might gnash their teeth at Donald Trump’s often cartoonish villainy—such as snatching more of his father’s estate by disinheriting Fred and his sister—they will feel for the author’s devastation at the birth of a severely impaired child and understand why the cause of caring for such children preoccupies him today.

More thoughtful than most of the Trump genre, but definitely not intended for the fan base.