Too Much and Never Enough, стр. 35
Donald came through the pantry from the kitchen. As he passed me, he asked, “What’s that?”
“It’s a present from you.”
“Really?” He looked at it for a second. “Ivana!” he shouted into the foyer. She was standing on the other side of the Christmas tree near the living room. “Ivana!”
“What is it, Donald?”
“This is great.” He pointed at the shoe, and she smiled. Maybe he thought it was real gold.
It had all started in 1977 with a three-pack of Bloomie’s underwear, retail $12, my very first Christmas present from Donald and his new wife, Ivana. That same year, they had given Fritz a leather-bound journal. It looked as though it were meant for somebody older, but it was really nice, and I felt a bit slighted until we realized that it was two years out of date. At least the underwear wouldn’t expire.
On holidays, Donald and Ivana pulled up to the House in either an expensive sports car or a chauffeur-driven limo that was even longer than my grandfather’s. They swept into the foyer like socialites, Ivana in her furs and silk and outrageous hair and makeup, Donald in his expensive three-piece suits and shiny shoes, everyone else looking conservative and unfashionable by comparison.
I grew up thinking that Donald had struck out on his own and single-handedly built the business that had turned my family name into a brand and that my grandfather, provincial and miserly, cared only about making and keeping money. On both counts, the truth was vastly different. A New York Times article published on October 2, 2018, that uncovered the vast amounts of alleged fraud and quasi-legal and illegal activities my family had engaged in over the course of several decades included this paragraph:
Fred Trump and his companies also began extending large loans and lines of credit to Donald Trump. Those loans dwarfed what the other Trumps got, the flow so constant at times that it was as if Donald Trump had his own Money Store. Consider 1979, when he borrowed $1.5 million in January, $65,000 in February, $122,000 in March, $150,000 in April, $192,000 in May, $226,000 in June, $2.4 million in July and $40,000 in August, according to records filed with New Jersey casino regulators.
In 1976, when Roy Cohn suggested that Donald and Ivana sign a prenuptial agreement, the terms set for Ivana’s compensation were based on Fred’s wealth because at the time Donald’s father was his only source of income. I heard from my grandmother that, in addition to alimony and child support as well as the condo, the prenup, at Ivana’s insistence, included a “rainy day” fund of $150,000. My parents’ divorce agreement had also been based on my grandfather’s wealth, but Ivana’s $150,000 bonus was worth almost twenty-one years of the $600-per-month checks my mother received for child support and alimony.
Before Ivana, there had always been a sameness to the holidays that made them blur together. Christmas when I was five was indistinguishable from Christmas when I was eleven. The routine never varied. We’d enter the House through the front door at 1:00 p.m., dozens of packages in tow, handshakes and air kisses all around, then gather in the living room for shrimp cocktail. Like the front door, we used the living room only twice a year. Dad came and went, but I have no recollection of his being there one way or another.
Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were identical, although one Christmas, Gam had the temerity to make roast beef instead of turkey. It was a meal everybody liked, but Donald and Robert were pissed off. Gam spent the whole meal with her head bowed, hands in her lap. Just when you thought the subject was dropped for good, one of them would say some version of “Jesus, Mom, I can’t believe you didn’t make turkey.”
Once Ivana became a part of the family, she joined Donald at the power center of the table, where he sat at my grandfather’s right hand, his only equal. The people nearest to them (Maryanne and Robert and Ivana) formed a claque with one mission: to prop Donald up, follow his lead in conversation, and defer to him as though nobody was as important as he was. I think that initially, it was simply an expedient—Maryanne and Robert had learned early on that there was no point in contradicting their father’s obvious preference. “I never challenged my father,” Maryanne said. “Ever.” It was easier to go along for the ride. Donald’s chiefs of staff are prime examples of this phenomenon. John Kelly, at least for a while, and Mick Mulvaney, without any reservations at all, would behave the same way—until they were ousted for not being sufficiently “loyal.” That’s how it always works with the sycophants. First they remain silent no matter what outrages are committed; then they make themselves complicit by not acting. Ultimately, they find they are expendable when Donald needs a scapegoat.
Over time, the discrepancy between Fred’s treatment of Donald and his other children became painfully clear. It was simpler for Rob and Maryanne to toe the party line in the hope that they wouldn’t get treated any worse, which seems to be the same calculation Republicans in Congress make every day now. They also knew what had happened to my father when he failed to meet Fred’s expectations. The rest of us at the other end of the table were superfluous; our job was to fill the cheap seats.
A year after the gold lamé shoe, the gift basket I received from Donald