Mary Trump exposes her family's 'unsettling obsession'

Mary Trump, the niece of President Donald Trump, exposed another of her many family "horror stories," this time sharing a "bizarre childhood memory" which revealed her grandfather's "unsettling obsession and a disturbing glimpse into family dynamics."

The younger Trump, daughter of the president's late older brother, is among the few members of their extended family who have been outspoken in criticizing his political career, emerging as a major voice across various forms of anti-Trump media. A professional psychologist, she has often argued that her uncle has become the man he is due to the warped upbringing her received from his parents, Fred Trump Sr. and Mary Anne MacLeod-Trump.

In one of her latest YouTube videos, released as part of her "Trump Family Horror Stories" series, Mary Trump shared an anecdote about an unnerving childhood interaction she had with her grandfather, which she now sees as an insight into the family's broader dysfunction.

Fred Trump Sr., she explained, exercised tight control over all aspects of his life, and as a result, always seemed to be in a good mood, despite her belief that he was an unquestionable sociopath with a tendency to belittle anyone he saw as weaker than himself. In addition to all of that, he also had some "weird, weird obsessions" that could be "inappropriate."

"When I was a kid, like a young kid, like eight, nine or something, he would bring out his wallet and slide out a wallet-sized picture and show it to me," she explained. "Now, what's so wrong with that? Well, it actually happened to be a picture of a half-naked woman. Yes... and by 'woman,' I mean somebody who could not have been much more than 18 years old. And he did this, I think... to kind of get a rise out of me. He thought it was really funny that he was showing his granddaughter, and at the time I was the youngest grandchild and the only granddaughter, a picture of a very heavily made-up woman who was holding up her breasts."

Sometimes when her grandfather did this, she added, he would also call over Donald Trump to show him as well, to which he would "leer and snicker" at the photo.

Another obsession Fred Trump had was with her hair, making it something much more focused on herself, given that he might have shown that photo to a lot of other people. Growing up, Mary Trump explained that she had "very thick and very blonde hair," while her grandfather had started going bald at an oddly young age. During their many interactions during the family's many dinners, after having very perfunctory chats about school, she claimed that her grandfather would always ask if he could "buy" her hair, often after taking out a billfold full of $100 bills.

"I know that this was in large part because my grandfather literally had nothing else to say to me," she continued. "And I guess maybe it felt like a way we were bonding. Like I don't know, at least I was getting some kind of attention. He was interested in something about me. But of course, it was creepy and objectifying, because it was pretty clear that the only worth I had to him was my friggin' hair... So, every single time I would say some version of one or the other of these two things, I'd either say very reasonably, I believe, 'I don't think it works that way, Grandpa.' I was a smart kid. Or, 'Sorry, Grandpa, I need to hang on to it,' because much like him, I didn't want to be bald either. So, that is a very brief but telling story of what I really meant to my grandfather. And it turns out that the only thing he really wanted from me was the one thing I couldn't give him."