Mary Trump has claimed that members of her family commonly used racist slurs when she was growing up. She says this is partly to blame for Donald Trump’s own racism.
The President’s niece, who has written a book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, gave an interview to The Washington Post on Wednesday.
Trump said her uncle is “clearly racist” and that it stems in part from the Trump family’s regular use of racist slurs.
“It comes easily to him and he thinks it’s going to score him points with the only people who are continuing to support him,” she said.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
She said her family had “a knee-jerk anti-Semitism, a knee-jerk racism.”
“Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the n-word or use anti-Semitic expressions,” Mary Trump said.
“Homophobia was never an issue because nobody ever talked about gay people, well, until my grandmother called Elton John [a slur],” said Trump, who is gay.
Trump believes the U.S. government has become a “macro version of my incredibly dysfunctional family.”
President Trump has “an unerring instinct for finding people who are weaker than he is” but he’s also “eminently usable by people who are stronger and savvier than he is,” she said.
Follow Darragh Roche on Twitter
Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media
