Mary Trump says racism was the norm in the Trump family

Mary Trump, former President Donald Trump’s niece and one of his harshest critics, said Friday that she would listen to family members being racist on a typical day growing up.

Podcast host Karen Hunter of The Karen Hunter Show asked Mary about her family background and how she became “radicalized” despite growing up in a “semi-privileged” home.

“Was it disinheritance? Hunter asked, in reference to a real estate portfolio worth millions of dollars that Mary’s father left to him after his death in 1981. However, the former president, Mary’s other uncle, Robert Trump, and aunt Maryanne Trump Barry is said to have “ejected” her from the inheritance, Reuters reported. Mary then filed a lawsuit against her family, but lost.

Mary told Hunter on Friday that her criticism of her family was not relevant to the inheritance case, but rather related to their racism, including her grandparents who lived in Jamaica Estates, New York, a neighborhood she described as “100% white and very upper middle class” when she was growing up.

Mary said she grew up in Jamaica, New York, in the 1960s and 1970s, which she says was predominantly black at the time.

“So I walked every day on the subway to school and walked home and walked past black-owned stores. Most of the people I interacted with in stores and stuff were black people and I was listening to racism in my family and then I would have had my own experience as a kid growing up in Jamaica. I didn’t know what they were talking about,” she said. “You belittle that whole category of people and that’s so far from my experience. It does not mean anything.”

Mary did not give examples of some of the remarks made by family members that she deemed racist during her interview.

She continued, “My parents didn’t have any black friends and everyone in my school was pretty much white. It was just this weird cognitive dissonance. he was an idiot at best.”

Donald Trump’s long history of accusations of racism

Donald Trump faced accusations of racism in the past long before he became president. However, he has repeatedly denied others’ claims and at one point said he was the “least racist person”.

However, a 2021 report by Reuters revealed some instances between 1972 and 2011 in which Trump was accused of racism, including when the FBI investigated allegations of racial discrimination in residential units owned by Trump Management Co. ., which he chaired. at the time, in the early 1970s. The report also mentions that the former president also called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in a one-page ad in several city newspapers following the case. “Central Park Five”.

The case involved five young, non-white men who were named as suspects for assaulting a white woman in New York in 1989. The men’s convictions were overturned in 2002 after a DNA test was matched with another man who confessed to the crime.

Additionally, Trump made a number of racist remarks during his presidential campaign where he repeatedly called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists.” He also banned nationals of Muslim-majority countries from entering the country during his presidency.

A 2019 report from the Brookings Institution, a US-based think tank, said “there is substantial evidence that Trump encouraged racism and benefited from it politically.” The report cites data showing an increase in hate crimes in areas where Trump has held rallies.

“First, Donald Trump’s support during the 2016 campaign was clearly motivated by racism, sexism and xenophobia. While some observers have attributed Trump’s success to economic anxiety, the data demonstrates that the anti-immigrant sentiment, racism and sexism are much more strongly linked to support for Trump,” reads the report from the think tank.

Newsweek contacted Trump’s media office and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research for comment.