The Chris Cuomo Project - Why Fred Trump Couldn’t Stay Quiet About His Uncle Donald

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Donald Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump III (author, “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way”), joins Chris Cuomo to discuss the complex dynamics within the Trump family. Fred offers personal anecdotes from growing up with Donald, providing a rare look at the family tensions and experiences that shaped one of the most controversial figures of our time. He also shares how Donald Trump never showed interest in meeting his disabled son, at one point even telling Fred to “let him die and move to Florida,” highlighting the painful family dynamics that fueled his advocacy for people with disabilities. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Is Donald Trump putting on an act or is this how he really is? I'll tell you who knows the answer. His family. And I've got one of them for you in their new book, All in the Family, How We Got This Way,

The Evolution or Devolution of the Trump family. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for being here at the Chris Cuomo Project. Fred Trump says he couldn't keep his silence anymore. Not because he has a bunch of bad things to say, but he knows Donald Trump and he knows why he is how he is. And he wants you to understand where it comes from. This is a perspective unlike any other you have heard. And there was a lot of wood still to chop for many people when it comes to Fred Trump.

But I know where he comes from. I know their family's history. So I knew what to ask. Here's Fred Trump. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever, storming every industry, literally billions of dollars of being invested. So buckle up. The problem is, AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control?

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You are former President Trump's nephew. Explain your relationship to him and the dynamic of the family in terms of who's who. Okay, Donald is my uncle. He is my father's younger brother. It went Mary Ann, then my father, Fred, or Freddie, then Elizabeth, then Donald, then Robert was the youngest. And you had a typical relationship

with an uncle growing up. You were around him, family settings, all that stuff. What do you think is important for people to know? Yeah, he's like my grandfather. He's always been a driven guy, when it all costs. That, I think, is the number one way to look at Donald. You know, we spent lots of good times together over the years. You know, there are anecdotes in the book where, you know, I would be sitting on his lap watching or on his knee watching the Twilight Zone or he was the first person

to put a golf club in my hand. So I know Donald on a personal basis. Did you tell him you were writing this book? I mentioned it to three of my cousins, Eric, Donnie and Ivanka. And what was the response? We had asked them for some questions. This goes back to last September. Just we were formulating exactly what we were going to be writing about. And

the focus was pretty much what is the next generation of Trump going to be? You know, my kids, kids, Donnie, Erica, Vanka's kids, kids, you know, what were we hoping to gain in my, in my mind, sort of, maybe a kindler, less frenetic family setting, because I grew up in, in the craziness of the Trump family. Ivanka did write back some very nice thoughts for it. And we didn't wind up using any of it. But I do appreciate her doing that. Eric and Donnie chose not to.

And why didn't you approach your uncle directly? He never approached me when he was writing books. That's how... Ha ha ha. That really is the reason why. What is your relationship with him like today? I probably don't have much of a relationship. The last I reached out to him was the day of the attempted suicide when I emailed his assistant who I've known for years and said, Lisa, my wife and the kids all wish him the

best speedy recovery. Please pass along the message, which she responded to will do. So that was the last communication I had with him. You mean the assassination attempt? Yes. All right, you said suicide. Did I say suicide? Oh, I apologize.

Freudian slip? I know, I don't know what I was thinking, sorry. You gotta believe that even though I find the book interesting and it's not a by design takedown book, I don't think that's fair, but that's certainly the way your uncle sees it. How do you interpret how he sees it? He'll probably say, you know, look at all I did for him. How could he go against me or how could he say negative things?

And you know, that's totally expected. I'm sure every single book that has any negative connotations to him, he will have that reaction. If your viewers do read All in the Family, you'll see that again, there are many, many anecdotes of warm times between the two of us. This is not, you know, the typical takedown piece. It's a well-rounded history of the family seen through May. You say you had to speak up.

You couldn't stay quiet anymore. The reason to stay quiet is that there's something to protect, and you don't have anything to protect in terms of silence doing it. Why didn't you speak, and what changed for you? As you may know, my youngest son, William, has complex disabilities. And William lived at home with us since birth after seven weeks in neonatal intensive care units.

He lived at home. When Donald ran in 2015, we had dead animals thrown on our lawn, we had reporters showing up to our house uninvited, cars at any time of the day or night parked outside our property. So it was not a safe space for William at that time for me to speak out. He subsequently has moved into a group home a couple of years ago. So he is no longer living at home. In fact, all our kids, we have three kids, Andrea, Christopher, and William.

So it's just my wife and I. I wrote the book to honor my dad, who I mentioned before, who was a very caring and charismatic guy, and William, who, again, complex disabilities is the most courageous and inspirational person I know and who has opened the door for me to advocate on behalf of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. To do that and you know, you like any family, they're all complicated. I had a complicated complex family, you know, somewhat cruel and to tell that story I needed to tell the story of I needed to tell the story

of the Lodestar, which is Donald. Again, told by someone who was there during his formative years, through his school years, business career, and his political career, where I met with him many times down in DC in the Oval Office. How was he towards your son and the dynamic of raising him? Donald never asked nor,

never asked to see William. He's never met him. William is 25 years old now. When William was at Mount Sinai in the city, William was there for three weeks having hundreds of seizures a day. Not once did Donald or any of my other aunts and uncles even call to see how he was doing. One time, we were probably two weeks in, my grandmother, who's Scottish by heritage, as you may know, had some relatives in from Scotland.

And she asked, hey, you know what? You need a break, why don't you go out for dinner with these folks? So Lisa and I walk into the restaurant and irony of ironies, there's Donald and Melania sitting at a table. As we walked by, he goes, hey, I hear your kid's sick. So that was the opening loving words about his grandnephew.

Your grandmother and my mother went to the same beauty parlor in Queens. I know. Was it the Leopard one Hillside Avenue? I guess, I don't know. Yeah, in the Camelot building. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what it was. But I mean, you know, she would speak about her very fondly, strong woman.

Yeah. We don't hear as much about Trump's mom as we do his dad, because everything is so focused on the fortune and, you know, the business. Right. What should people know about the matriarch? Well, it really is a hell of a story. And I learned some things I did not know.

We always knew Gam, as I call her, came from uppermost Scotland, the Isle of Louis. You can't really get any higher than that. She came over to the United States on the US, yeah, I believe it was the USS Transylvania and met Fred Trump. She went back. Uh, she had a sister who, who had come over first and, uh, she wound up working as a maid in one of Andrew Carnegie's songs after he had passed kind of crazy. Um, she was sweetly tough is, is the best I, I could describe her. She had that rogue and I was a rambunctious little guy

and she would always pull out the wooden spoon knowing that I better calm down around her. But she was tough. She was in hospital a lot. She had this ability of breaking bones. So she had a diet of tea and Coca-Cola. I never saw her drink milk or water or anything. That was it.

So I guess it made her bones a little brittle. But yeah, she was sweetly tough. And what did you make of the dynamic between her and your father and her and your uncle? You know, I have to say this because of the relationship I had with my father. I think she had a special place for my father. My dad was without question the free spirit of the family, the black sheep of the family.

He did not want to follow in my grandfather's footsteps. He wanted to be an airline pilot and he became an airline pilot. Quite an accomplishment in the early 1960s to fly a 707 for TWA. But again, that wasn't good enough for my grandfather. And I like to tell this story. People have said to me, oh, your family is like a succession story, the TV show. I said, no, it really isn't. Because in succession, all three of the siblings want to take over the family business. My father wanted to know part of it. He was in it for a while and hated it, but it had with my grandfather all the time, you know, old school versus new school.

And, uh, dad followed his dream and he was demeaned for that. In fact, Donald famously called him a glorified bus driver. Um, I, I joked that, uh that let me see Donald fly a plane. No, no, no, let's not see Donald fly a plane. So yeah, Gam had a sweet spot for him. Donald and my grandfather were very similar. You knew my grandfather, you know Donald. They were very similar.

You can't be a super nice guy and build the most amount apartments in Brooklyn and second most in Queens. Uh, you have to be a tough driven guy, well connected, which he was, but always, and you know this always kept a low profile. That was not his thing. He, he, his ego did not show through in any way. He really wasn't, I had a lunch with him one time when he was in his final years

at an Italian restaurant in Sheepshead Bay and everybody was coming up to him and I turned to my Uncle Rob and I said, you know what, he really is the mayor. He's the mayor of Brooklyn. Anytime we would go to Peter Lugar's, people would stop. So that is one difference from Donald. people would stop. So that is one difference from Donald. Again, you know him. Everything is bombastic, marketing, branding, ego. Let me do a series of like, what did it mean to you that? So you're trying to live your life.

Your uncle is always the biggest shadow cast on the family, right? Cause he's getting all the attention. When he got into politics, what did it mean to you when Donald Trump decided to run for president? It's interesting in 2011, he really dipped his toe into it. He's always been invited.

In fact, the whole family was always involved in politics one way or another. You know, my fact, the whole family was always involved in politics one way or another. You know, my grandfather with the Democratic machine in Brooklyn and Queens, you know, old Donald Manus and those folks, someone you know or knew. He started getting some really good traction there. And I remember having lunch with Mary Ann one day and saying, you know, what if he gets the 35% or so? He's gonna have to make a decision to cut out of this thing

before the pressure just builds. And he did, he just kind of stopped his talk. But I remember, and I mentioned this in the book, watching the correspondence dinner when Obama was president and Obama, you know, he woke the sleeping giant by insulting Donald. If there's one thing that drives Donald, well, two things.

One thing that drives him absolutely nuts is if you mock him or call him a loser. And Obama went right for the jugular that night and I could see it in his eyes. And I turned to my wife in the room where I'm in right now and I said Uh-oh, he's gonna go for it and he did and he did what is that in him? Well, he he hates to be labeled a loser so he he was being Mocked and basically called a loser that day. So he needed to win.

And he did, and I give him credit, I really do. I believe in policy over politics 100% of the time. But he dipped into this populist, I'm a man of the people kind of guy. And people bought into it. And it worked, it worked in a big way, really quickly. I mean, he jumped right to the top of the heap. Do you believe he is a man of the people kind of guy?

No, he talks the good talk. He doesn't hang out with guys like you and me. He is not, I don't think, a man of the people, no. He speaks the words he needs to. He uses people as props to get what he needs. How does he know how to say the right thing? Well, he grew up in Queens. We know how to do that. The most diverse place on the planet

is Queens, New York. So he grew up in that era. And when he got more successful and moved to Manhattan, then he started hanging out with, you know, the more social, hedgy fun guys. And that's where he sort of lost what I thought was his genuine ability to deal with people on the street. Did you support his first run for president? I didn't. Like I said, it's policy over politics for me.

So Hillary Clinton, even though I thought she was a flawed candidate, she believed in things that I did. And the same with Joe Biden. Different race, different time during COVID. But again, his policies were much closer to me than what Donald and the Republican Party or what it's morphed into, I believe.

How many people in your family do you think didn't just automatically support Donald Trump because he's a member of your family? It's very rare to hear this kind of objectivity. Well, I know for a fact because I was with her quite often during the first campaign Marianne his older sister was absolutely against him. In fact, she and her son She showed me the paper were contemplating writing an op-ed to the time saying

He's not the right guy. He's not capable of it Hmm. And what does that mean to you that members of the family don't support him? And what does that mean to you that members of the family don't support him? It could be two different things, Chris. One, again, we didn't believe in a lot of the things he was pushing forward, but imagine, and you've lived this life too, imagine being part of a family that is in the news

every single day, not just a real estate guy being in the news. I could handle it. I was in the rough and tumble real estate world for 35 years in Manhattan. So I could handle that stuff. But when it's every day and there once he became a candidate and certainly when he became president, there was no gray anymore. It was you loved them or you hated them.

And I got it all. You know, I, whenever I would meet people, I'd have to say, okay, how am I going to respond to this person? You loved them or you hated them. And I got it all. Whenever I would meet people, I'd have to say, okay, how am I gonna respond to this person? Oh, he sucks. Oh yeah, no, he's my uncle. I can't say that. Oh, he's the greatest. Oh, okay, you know, fantastic.

It's a tricky position, but it's all subject to how you actually feel about the person involved, right? Everybody always had an opinion about my pop, opinion about my brother, opinion about me. But I look at those through the lens of how I feel about them. And what was your truth about your uncle? Look, like I said, I really had a fine relationship with him,

a fun relationship with him. I mean, the number of times we played golf or he would used to take me to movies when I was a kid, I would play ball in the backyard or in Midland Parkway. But, you know, he did horrific things to me also. So my lens is a little foggy at times. In fact, one of the things about the book is a little foggy at times. In fact, one of the things about the book that was cathartic for me is that I realized that I'm more forgiving than I realized I was. Again, he has done some terrible things to me and my family, but we worked out our differences in the end. I would like to hope that this would be the same way, maybe a little different circumstances, but we'll see. What do you want people to understand about the horrible things that your uncle did to

your father and by extension the whole family? Yeah, I mean, dad was again, a, he rooted for the underdog. And if I can give one quick story, just that really has summed up my dad. And when my grandfather died, I was asked to give a eulogy at Marble Collegiate Church. And I compared them, grandfather driven guy, my father, just a free spirit.

When dad was in his last year or so of life, I was in the middle semester of my freshman year of college and I was gonna go on a tour to Europe. And I visited him at Jamaica Hospital and he said, look, here's the a hundred dollars, go buy a camera. I said, great, camera, I need a camera for a trip to Europe. I come back with the camera and it says,

there's a young lady about your age, two rooms down, bring her this camera, because she really wants a camera. That young girl had terminal cancer and really didn't have that much longer to live. So that taught me a lesson, and I mentioned that at the eulogy. So that's the kind of guy he is. Where he got it, I assume from my grandmother.

It certainly wasn't from my grandfather. And Donald would just take him apart. It was sad to see. And dad was also, as you know, was an alcoholic. And that was the embarrassment for the family. And it was a shame. And I saw firsthand how that just destroyed my father. And you know, there was no support really from much of anybody else in the family.

And I'll let you know that I'm a recovering alcoholic. I remember on 168th Street and Highland Avenue at a red light, my father, I must have been 15 years old, said, pal, we've got a bad gene in the family. Be careful. Well, I tried and I did not succeed up until the past half a year. So the reason I was able to do it is the support of my family, of my wife and my three kids who didn't say, oh boy, what a loser you are for drinking.

They said, we need you to stop. You're hurting yourself and you're hurting us. People have different experiences with addiction. Some see it as just behavior, willpower or lack thereof. Your uncle is certainly one of those in terms of how he's always spoken about your father. Your uncle is certainly one of those in terms of how he's always spoken about your father. He always in my recollection would refer to your father as kind of a weak link because of that. And then he started to use him in politics as I had to get all about addiction.

My brother. But what did you make of how he told the public and how you knew he felt it in private? Well, I saw it firsthand again, how Donald would malign dad for that. And in his early books, there was never any real blowing, dad helped Donald get into the University of Pennsylvania through a contact of his that he went to St. Paul's school with. You know, so even though dad was being treated poorly by Donald, he still wanted to help.

Funny thing though, someone asked me the other day if he ever had a nickname and I don't remember Donald having a nickname, but I do remember one time when dad and I went to, it was in Fresh Meadows to get a card for Mother's Day. He came out with two. I said, boy, two. And he goes, one for your mother and one for Donald. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Shopify. You know, when you think of great duos, Batman and Robin, Jordan and Pippin, and the perfect pairing when it comes to growing your business, you and Shopify.

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This is a ballsy move for you, Fred, to write the book. No matter how you process it personally in terms of the optics around it, you're gonna be seen as a traitor. And I'm sure that's gotta really be tough for you to process because you've had to take so much by being named Trump and by being the nephew that you never asked for and that you didn't stand for. And now here you are and people are going to see this as like you doing the wrong thing. Why is it the right thing?

You know, there's one really, well it was a painful episode when William came home after seven weeks in three different hospitals on an extremely potent steroid to help stem his seizures. William has epilepsy but he also has a genetic mutation called KCNQ2. About two weeks being home, received a letter from Donald's attorney, basically saying that my sister Mary and I were cut out of the will. We discovered that Donald had hatched a scheme, and you remember this well, he was in financial straits, really bad, devastating financial straits, so bad and humiliating that banks had to put him on an allowance. The thing that people don't realize is after my father's death, Donald was named my

trustee. He was my trustee, which I take to mean, you take care. You're there to protect that person, me and my family. He did the exact opposite. So when I look at him when he was president and now that he wants to be there again, if he could do that to his nephew, his older brother's son, how could he be trusted to take care of the needs and wants of the people of this country? How did he explain it to you? of the people of this country. How did he explain it to you? He never did. It was interesting.

And this is one of those, this is, a few months after we settled, and keep in mind, Donald never settles anything, but I got him to settle America, and so maybe, you know, we're the only people in the world that's ever done that. I say that half jokingly. I received the call saying Donald wanted me to become an honorary member at Ryrecliffe,

the golf club in Westchester. I said, I'll only do it if he and I play golf. It was agreed to. We had a really fun time. At the end of it, we were saying our goodbyes. He actually gave me a hug, which was the first hug I got from him since I was probably five years old, which is fine. Very Germanic, unemotional family.

And he said, we're done, right? And many people take that to mean we're done, no more relationship. What he meant was we're done with the animosity, we're done, we're burying the hatchet. I said, yeah, we are. And with that, we said goodbye and we had a really nice relationship throughout the years. How long ago was that? It was probably 2001. What did you think of your sister, Mary, becoming such a vocal critic of Trump and being all

over TV and writing about it and what did it mean to you to watch that? I'm going to take a knock at the media if you don't mind. The difference between what I write about and what Mary writes about, Mary had no real relationship with Donald whatsoever. My guess is when she wrote that book, she had only spoken to him for maybe a minute at the White House for a birthday event that was held on behalf for my Aunt Mary Ann and Aunt Elizabeth. Before that, she probably hadn't spoken to Donald for

30 years. So I look at her book and it was hugely successful and okay. But it was through the lens of a trained psychologist. Right. Mine is through the eyes of someone who was there, played golf with them, went to movies with them, throughout, you know, up until the last time we spoke a couple of years ago or a year or so ago. So that's the difference. How was your relationship with Mary? We really don't have one right now. Because?

I was against her writing the book. I had a feeling I knew what it was going to be about. I wasn't ready to have William. I knew William would be mentioned in fact on one of the first shows she went on to. William's name was mentioned and that infuriated me. We're very private people, my wife and the three kids. And again, being in the real estate business in Manhattan for over three decades, I just kept a low profile. I was never in the limelight. Sure, I had my interviews, I did my speeches and all that stuff, but never wondered anything more than that. This was us thrown into a situation we wanted no part of. And like I said in the beginning,

we came out with a book when we knew William was gonna be safe and sheltered from this. The other two are old enough, they can handle it. And to circle back to it, people are saying, oh, okay, all in the family. Why do I need to read this book? Why do you need, if this book? Why do you need? If you're an American citizen, voter,

or just somebody who is interested in family, why do you need to read this book? Well, I'll jump right to the last time Donald and I spoke, if you wanna talk about family. He and I were talking about William, and Donald says, your son doesn't recognize you, let him die and move down to Florida. So I don't know how you explain any human being saying that about any other human being, but to say it about your grand nephew

But to say about your grand nephew, who you had never met and never asked to meet, that's that to me, if you know, family is important to people, and you're thinking of voting for Donald, I just want to put it out there that that's what exactly what he said. What'd you say? I paused and said, No, Donald, he does recognize me, which he does. William is wheelchair bound. He needs assistance 24 hours a day, but he lights up people's lives with his incredible blue eyes and his smile. As I mentioned before, Donald hates to be labeled a loser. There's no doubt he is the loser without getting to know William.

Is there something wrong with your uncle? I'm not playing armchair psychologist here. I just, I have seen him change over the years. He goes too far. Again, you know, for me, it's policy over politics. So where things like with the the black journalists event, what was it a week ago? And I was asked about this on TV.

I said to me, it just didn't make political sense to do that. I didn't understand where he's going for it, much like the crowd size thing again. And I was asked about that Thursday night. And I said, I just can answer it this way. I was two rows behind him at the inauguration. I know what that crowd size was. And by the way, why the hell are we even talking about it? Who cares?

It's important to Donald. Are you fascinated by how much he is allowed to get away with in politics that no one else ever has and how for almost half this country, it's almost a badge of honor for Trump? I don't understand it. I read something years ago when he was really starting to run the tracks during the campaign and the primaries. Someone in an article said, people just like to be lied to. They like to feel good about themselves, and Donald is great at that.

But what he does, I call it trickle-down cruelty. He'll make this group feel great about themselves, and then this group will make the group behind them seem lesser. So it just keeps going down. And as I said before, he uses them as props, and then he'll cast them aside. And you say you've seen him change over the years. So you believe that he wasn't always this way. He wasn't always this way. I mean, sure. He was bombastic. He had the biggest ego on the planet Earth.

And I firmly believe that. He has changed. He has amped up his base to the point where he has to stay a step ahead of them now. And they want red meat. They want it in a big, bad way. And he's there to supply it for them. Why do you think he's running again? I'll leave the legal issues aside.

He needs to win. He needs to, what is it, only one president in the past hundred and some odd years has lost an election then come back to win again. He's not a great historian, but he probably knows that. He just, he needs to win again. He's not a great historian, but he probably knows that. He just, he needs to win. And as I say, if he loses, he'll run again in 2028. You really think so?

He'll talk about it and be very well met. Do you have any relationship with any of his kids? You mentioned that Ivanka wrote you back when you wrote for contributions to the book. I also want to give a shout out to Ivanka because right after Donald was inaugurated, my wife reached out to her as part of our advocacy issues. And she put us in touch with Ben Carson,

Housing Urban Development, something you know about. And that started the ball rolling for our advocacy, sorry. He put us in touch with Ben Carson, Housing Urban Development, something you know about. That started the ball rolling for our advocacy down in DC. It ended in a meeting in the Oval Office that Donald attended and it was 45 minutes long and it was great. I mean, he was engaged. He's looking at the stock market every other minute, but for him, he was engaged in something. I guarantee maybe Richard Nixon could have come close to this, but I've never heard the

F-bomb thrown out so many times in a 45-minute span. At the end of the meeting, we dispersed, and he called me back in and he grieved me with his typical, hey, pal, how's it going? And we chatted for a minute and he says, you know, those people, the costs, they should just die. So that was the precursor to him talking to me three years later. And let me just say this. And I know people say this a lot, and it's true, that he doesn't like to be around people who wounded veterans. New York Times reporter in 2015 that he mocked. The disturbing thing other than that

was that the crowd just ate it up, which is disgusting. Well, his followers say he didn't do it, that that was a body movement, that it's a gesture he just does from time to time when he's mocking someone. Okay. Can I call BS on that? Sure. I just did. And one great thing at the inauguration, besides seeing the crowd size, was my wife and two of my older, my two older kids were with me and sitting behind me was John McCain.

So this is after Donald had said he's not a war hero. Again, politically, what did that get him? But again, his base said, he's not a war hero. So when the service was over, we got up and I said, kids, I want to introduce you to somebody. Said, this is Senator McCain. I don't use this word very much at all because I think it's been cheapened over the years. I said, this is an American hero. And I meant that and I wish Donald had acknowledged

that early on and didn't go the way he did. Why'd you go to the inauguration? He invited me and he was my uncle. And I don't know if I'm allowed to curse on your show. So I'll tone it down. The night before the inauguration, there was a really great dinner sponsored by the Republican Senatorial Committee in Union Station on the main level. Beautiful. And we were sitting about a table away from Donald and Melania and the kids. I said to my group,

hey, guys, let's go over and see uncle Donald cause we probably won't. Secret service kind of muscles in and says you can't. I said, oh no, it's my uncle. And they wouldn't let me go. Melania had noticed us, tap Donald on the shoulder. Donald goes like this.

I said, that good enough guys? There's the queens coming out in me, Chris. And I leaned into him and I said, look, my mom wants me to wish you the best and let you know that this is the anniversary of when my mom and dad got married. And he pulls in a little closer and he goes, can you believe this FNS?

Well, nobody was more surprised that he won than he was. I'm not sure he wanted to win. He certainly wants to win now. What is your, what do you make of people saying that he has authoritarian dreams and that he wants to institute Project 2025 or any of these grand ambitions of dismantling the democracy as we know it. Do you believe your uncle is capable

or has any appetite for those kinds of endeavors? From everything I see and everything I've known about him in the past few years, yeah. I mean, Project 2025, as much as he wants to distance himself from it, maybe that's his political instincts. It's a dangerous, dystopian view of the country. Does he want to be number one? I don't think he wants to be called a king.

I think he wants to be called an authoritarian. It's in him to do that. And look at the, I call them the merry band of miscreants that he has surrounding him. Guys who are full-throated saying, we want this. And it's crazy, you get a guy, what's his name? Gorka. He came from a fascist country, and now he's linked his wagon to a group of people

that wanna take us down that road. I just don't understand it. The counter is that your uncle doesn't have those kinds of ambitions. He just wants to win. And being president saying he won it again. That's enough. He doesn't really care about policy doesn't really care about anything like how to shape the government. He doesn't care about that. He just wants the glow and the shine.

When I first started going down and visiting him in the Oval care about that. He just wants the glow and the shine. When I first started going down and visiting him in the Oval Office, I remember a sense of loneliness of him because Malani and Barron weren't down there at the time. And if I don't know if you know Keith Schiller, he was his bodyguard in the city. And the day that the Patriots were there to take their tour of the White House, I was there with my older son and a buddy of his from Lehigh, where I went and my dad went, actually. And Keith came up to me and said, you know, Donald really likes it when you're here because

you remind him of the old times. He didn't, I don't think he really knew what he was getting himself into. I was there plenty of times where the bureaucrats would come in the room and say, you just can't do this. You can't do this. And he'd say, no, I have to do this. This is the way I want it. And he was realizing in a tough way, much like when I had my first job and there was

no longer throwing on the grunge hat and going into the office, or saying, I don't really want to go to history today. He realized that this was a huge bureaucracy. And I think we're seeing it now, his moves to change out, what is it, 20, 25,000 bureaucrats and put people in that will just lockstep follow him.

Did you have reservations about writing this book because of what it might do or undo with your relationship with him? Here's why we really wrote the book. This is, and I have a national platform now, whether that's great or not. I mean, I've had a lot of fun and talking with you is great, but it gives me the opportunity to advocate on behalf of the disabled community.

There's a lot of work to be done. And I, we tried it through the executive branch. You know, it's, it's just a sausage grinder. That's the trait cliche, but that's exactly what it is. So if I can help with these incredible people that Lisa and I have been involved with, a group called Equally Alive, to start a movement, if you will. I mean, it's a large block of people and it's a large voting block of people. You know, caregivers are truly just so important to the lives of the disabled.

They need better pay. They need better training. The housing issue is there's no one size fits all for the disabled community. In fact, you know, Williams Group Home is fine, but it may not be fine in the future. There's really not that many models. It has to be thought out. And here's the thing for the Republican side of the aisle to think about. We're not just saying, hey, let's just throw a bunch of dollars at this problem and it'll solve itself. It won't. We've all seen that a million times. We're advocating for more efficiency,

which means spending less and getting better results. And there are a multitude of ways that can be done. I look at it this way, Chris, we have issues that are just polarizing this country. Women's reproductive rights, the environment, gun issues, all partisan and they may be partisan issues till the day you and I die. Advocating for the disabled is a bipartisan issue and it really needs to be treated that way. I can't imagine anyone wouldn't want to get behind that. Well, have you thought at all that by

writing the book you may have frustrated efforts to get change because the person who could do the most may now be motivated to do the least? I'd like to think, I'd like to think that he may step back and say, as I was mentioning before, you know what? Now maybe through Fred and the conversations we've had, maybe it's time to change and get this on the road. He has, he would have the power to do that. Um, you know, I am, I am supporting Kamala Harris because I know that she will support advocacy for the disabled. That's clear to me. And, um, if, if Donald wins, these people always ask me, would

you go to the inauguration again? Well, I don't know if he'd invite me, but sure. I'd go down there. I'm tough. I'll take whatever arrows come my way. If I can go down there and be a positive influence and try to change minds, I'll do that in a heartbeat. Have you gotten any sense of his reaction to the book

or the people around him? There was a statement, I guess, from Steve Chung. And I've heard this tune many times before. My guess is Steve hasn't read the book. And frankly, well, Donald certainly hasn't. Someone may have put some notes on an index card for him. But it's a truthful book. If anybody wants to know the real inside of Donald

seeing again from someone who was there for decades and decades, you know, take a look. Take a look. Fred Trump, I wish you all success with your advocacy. You're right, it is a bipartisan cause, but the reality that there's still so much to do lets you know that the will isn't where we need it to be. So thank you for the advocacy on behalf of you

and your wife and your entire family and your son. Thank you. Thank you for spending the opportunity with me. I'm glad to get the word out. Thanks. Take care, Chris. It is tough to reconcile how family deals with one another, isn't it? Says such ugly stuff about your son, about you, and yet you're there for him at the inauguration. He's still your

uncle, but how he treats you, how he treated your father. Family's complicated. We all know it. But man, it really does help you understand how what you're seeing that may seem bizarre may just be what Donald Trump knows how to do best. What did you think of the book? Let me know with questions or comments. I'm Chris Cuomo.

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