“Too Much and Never Enough” is the second in my series, “books I bought to annoy the President”.  The first was John Bolton’s book, which is a bit of a slog.  I took a break for the easy reading of Mary Trump’s story.

The book describes the Trump family history from the rise of her grandfather (Fred Sr) to present day, concentrating on her father (Fred Jr) and Donald.  I really wish it had been published in 2016, as confirmation that Donald Trump has been incapable of empathy nearly his entire life isn’t really news in 2020.

From a detail point of view, “Too Much and Never Enough” is not the story of Donald but the story of Mary’s father’s descent into alcoholism and early death.  The eldest Trump son could not deal with the pressure of meeting his fathers expectations.  The details about Donald we already know.  Eventually Mary’s family was written out of the will.  So be it, the wealthy families Christianity teaches us to worship love pettiness.  Mary’s family filed suit after they cut off health insurance.

The “new” part of the book was the story of how one of Trump Sr’s companies had been split between all four kids, while Fred Jr was still alive.  When Mary and her brother settled the suit over the will, they were required to be bought out of their shares in that company.  However the family VASTLY undervalued its value at the time, effectively cheating Mary and her brother out of millions.  The filings for that case became the part of a 2018 newspaper series about how the Trumps avoided taxes, and was used to file a fraud case active as the book went to press.

The book confirms that Donald Trump has been an asshole his entire life.  But the only people who will read it are likely already on board with that thought.  I had hoped for some more understanding on why Donald turned out that way, but its just a combination of a terancical father and born personality.