**DISCLAIMER: This article was first published in July of 2024**
According to one of Donald Trump’s own family members, the scandal-plagued former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee has a few stories and secrets in his closet that he still finds embarrassing. But, to make matters even worse, his family member claims that there’s one very specific story from his childhood that, still to this day, really gets under Donald’s skin.
Mary Trump, Donald’s blood-related niece and sworn, vocal critic of her ex-presidential and felony-convicted uncle, has long been one of the biggest voices in today’s atmosphere to speak out against the corrupt and disgraced former president.
A lot of Mary’s thoughts and expert opinions (as a bona fide psychologist) are published in her Substack newsletter — including this particularly entertaining, enlightening, and hilarious revelation about the one story from her uncle’s childhood that still to this day, even decades later, makes his skin crawl.
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You may have heard it before — the infamous mashed potato story.
Recently, Mary took to her Substack where she told the story of being invited to the then-Trump White House back in 2017, for a family birthday celebration, just shortly after her uncle was sworn into the United States presidency. Mary writes that it felt “weird” to attend the event and upon her arrival, she instantly regretted coming.
But nevertheless, Mary stuck it out and now recalls another relative bringing up the story of the time that Mary Trump’s father, Freddy Trump, dumped the bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head because he wouldn’t stop tormenting” her other uncle, Rob.
“Everybody in the family, my aunts, uncles, brother, cousins, knew that mashed potato story. We referred to it, in fact as ‘the legendary mashed potato story.’ We all laughed because, on the one hand, it was sort of an homage to my dad who’d been dead since I was 16. And it was a way for Maryanne to get under Donald’s skin because Donald hated that story. He did not laugh. In fact, what (sic) he crossed his arms and pouted, and he didn’t stop pouting until the subject had been changed,” she wrote in her recollection of the Trump White House birthday party. “What actually was the mashed potato story? It wasn’t just that my dad had dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head. It was why (sic) he did and the aftermath.”
Trump’s niece goes on to explain that when Donald was around 7 years old, he was constantly “tormenting his little brother, Robert, who was about five at the time and was also very frail, very skinny, very pale, and very thin-skinned, figuratively, if not literally.”
“In the midst of the fighting and yelling and sobbing, my grandmother started setting the table and bringing the food in from the kitchen. As things continued to escalate, my dad, in just a fit of frustration, did the only thing he could think of to do to make Donald stop: He picked up what must have been the quite massive bowl of mashed potatoes that my grandmother had just put on the table and he dumped it on Donald’s head. Robert immediately went quiet and Donald was speechless,” Mary writes. “And, probably worst of all for him, everybody, except Donald, of course, started laughing. They were laughing their heads off, and Donald knew they were laughing at him. It may have been the first time, at least consciously, that Donald felt that awful feeling of humiliation, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t laugh it off because, even then, he wasn’t capable of laughing at himself.”
Mary Trump, as both a member of the Trump family and a psychologist goes on to say that this event, in some ways, is “the source of his grievance, the source of his always feeling that everything is against him and life is completely unfair.”
“The bowl of masked (sic) potatoes ended Robert’s suffering, at least that night, but it also set Donald’s into motion. It was the source of his terror of being humiliated. And he developed some very strong armor and defense mechanisms so he’d never feel that way again,” she explains. “We’ve seen how this plays out. It’s a big part of why he’s cruel to other people—he needs to get there before the other person has a chance. But it’s also his Achille’s (sic) heel. One of my fantasies is that, as we get closer to the election, we actually start counter-programming his rallies and have a massive group of people, equipped with large bowls of mashed potatoes, get inside his venue.”
Mary wraps up her piece by noting that it is”so easy to get under this guy’s skin,” and expresses her hope that more people start doing so more often.
“It doesn’t take much, but I have yet to see anybody try. Let’s hope that President Biden gets in another debate with Donald and really goes for the jugular, rhetorically speaking,” she writes. “Honestly, it’s as simple as a bowl of mashed potatoes.”
Find Mary Trump’s Substack piece here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
