Trump's niece says the way he was raised left him 'utterly incapable of leading this country'

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

President Trump grew up in a family with so many issues that it left him "utterly incapable of leading this country, and it's dangerous to allow him to do so," his niece, Mary Trump, told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday.

Mary Trump's tell-all, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, was released on Tuesday. She is a clinical psychologist, and describes her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr., as being a "sociopath," telling Stephanopoulos he was "incredibly driven in a way that turned other people, including his children [and] wife, into pawns to be used to his own ends."

It is impossible, Mary Trump added, "to know who Donald might have been under different circumstances and with different parents." After her grandfather died in 1999, Mary Trump learned that he had almost entirely cut her and her brother out of his will. They filed a lawsuit, and she told Stephanopoulos in order to "cause us more pain and make us more desperate," her aunts and uncles canceled the health insurance they received through Fred Trump Sr.'s company. The siblings reached a settlement in 2001, but she said it wasn't a fair one.

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Mary Trump also shared that she visited her uncle in the White House a few months after he was inaugurated, and he "already seemed very strained by the pressures. He'd never been in a situation before where he wasn't entirely protected from criticism or accountability or things like that." Stephanopoulos asked her what she would say to him if they spoke today, and Mary Trump responded, "Resign."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.