Features

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man

Published

6 years ago

2020/07/26

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

Mary Trump is Donald Trump’s only niece, the daughter of Trump’s alcoholic older brother, who died of a heart attack in 1981 when he was 43 years of age. Dr. Trump has painted a convincing portrait of the president of the United States and the toxic family that has made him “a man who threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.”

Her book, already a New York Times bestseller, has sold over a million copies on the first day of its release on July 14.

Donald Trump tried unsuccessfully to stop the publication of Dr. Trump’s book on the basis of a Non-Disclosure Agreement in the litigation of his father’s will, which he says prevents her from disclosing anything regarding the family. However, the Courts ruled that she has not violated the NDA and permitted its release.

Trump has derided the book, saying that “she’s a seldom seen niece who knows little about me, and says untruthful things about my parents, who couldn’t stand her….She’s a mess!”

However, Dr. Trump has made it very clear, by her narrative of some very interesting anecdotes, that she was very much a part of this family till the death of her grandfather in 1999. She says that Donald’s father was oftentimes aloof, and only had time for Donald, his favourite son whom he groomed to be his heir; but she and her grandmother, Mary Anne shared a deep love for each other. She confirms she’s had very little contact with her family after the disputed litigation of her grandfather’s will in 2001.

Dr. Trump gives a vivid description of the toxic influence of Donald’s father, Fred Trump, had on the entire family. Fred built up the family fortune by investing in real estate with the wealth left to him by his father, who had died during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. He concentrated initially in developing properties in Queens, New York, but later extended his activities to Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Fred “had always been vain about his appearance and bemoaned his receding hairline”, which he chose to camouflage with a wig. The “cheap drugstore dye” he used for the wig turned it to a “jarring shade of magenta”. Mary remembers Fred offering her $100 for her hair when she was a teenager. She writes “I laughed” and said “Sorry, Grandpa, I need to hang on to it.” Donald’s obsession with his own blonde hair-weave shows that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Fred died in 1999, aged 93, leaving a fortune of approximately $300 million, the bulk of which went to Donald. Fred Trump had suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease during the last six years of his life. At his funeral, all his children gave eulogies, where the emphasis “was on my grandfather’s material success and his killer instinct …. Donald was the only one to deviate from the script. In a cringe-inducing turn, his eulogy devolved into a paean of his own greatness.” Sound familiar?

She writes very tenderly about her own father, Freddie, Fred’s oldest son, who was a more accomplished, though flawed, man than Donald. Freddie worked for the family business for a time, but got bored with real estate development, boredom his dominant father considered a weakness. He left to get his commercial pilots’ licence and worked for TWA, one of the most prestigious airlines at that time. However, alcoholism severely impacted his life. According to a New York Times article, “He got divorced, quit flying because he knew his drinking presented a danger and failed at commercial fishing in Florida.” By the late 1970s, he was living back in his parents’ house in Queens. Mary makes little reference to her mother, Linda, who was settled with a modest allowance after her divorce and was generally ostracized by the rest of the clan.

Strangely, she has at times turned Donald into a figure deserving of sympathy, being the victim of an abusive father. She says that “Fred destroyed Donald, by short-circuiting his ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotions. By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it.”

When Donald was seven years old, his brother, Freddie, the writer’s father, then 15, dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Trump’s head at a family dinner. The laughter which ensued caused Trump severe humiliation, which showed even six decades later; during a toast at a party in the White House in 2017, Donald’s older sister, Maryanne, laughingly recalled this incident, which had become a part of family lore. Trump was deeply humiliated at being the brunt of the joke. He has since learned “to use humiliation as a weapon; from then on, he would use the weapon, never be at the sharp end of it.”

Which immediately brings to mind President Obama’s speech at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he destroyed Trump with contemptuous comments which also drew much laughter, derision and applause from the stellar audience. The humiliation caused by this speech is, we are told, the main reason Trump decided to run for the Presidency in 2016. So maybe Trump is right, maybe the mess the country is in today is really Obama’s fault.

Another time, Trump saw the author in a bikini at Mar-a-Lago, and exclaimed: “Holy shit, Mary, you’re stacked.” This tasteless remark to a niece indicates that his predilection for incest is not only confined to his sick feelings for his daughter, Ivanka, whom he has at various times groped in public, and described as having a “very hot body” and, if he weren’t married, he’d be dating her.

His own daughter. Think about that. Take your time.

Dr. Trump says that she didn’t write the book with any desire for money or revenge. She says she was reluctant to speak up during the 2016 election as she may have been dismissed as a disgruntled, estranged family member. She also thought there would be competent people in his administration who understood how government worked and would be able to curb his worst impulses. “Clearly I was wrong to make that assumption…. The events of the last three years, however, forced my hand, and I can no longer remain silent. By the time this book is published, hundreds of thousands of American lives will have been sacrificed on the altar of Donald’s hubris and willful ignorance. If he is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American democracy.”

She added that the last straw of so many straws was “the horrors at the border, separating children from their parents, the torture, the kidnapping and incarceration of them in cages was unthinkable, unbearable. When an opportunity presented itself to write this book as a warning, I needed to take the leap.”

A clinical psychologist, Dr. Trump writes, “Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a battery of neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.” She says that “a large minority of people still confuse his arrogance for strength, his false bravado for accomplishment and his superficial interest in them for charisma.” Sadly, “at a very deep level, his bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long-dead father.”

What makes Dr. Trump’s book so credible is that she reveals, with realistic anecdotes, characteristics we have already seen for ourselves in the behaviour of this petty little man during the past three years: his plantation mentality, his narcissistic insecurity, his ignorant incompetence, his contempt for decency, ethics and the rule of law, his apathy for the welfare of everyone but himself, have all made a mockery of the greatest office in the land. He has reduced America from the greatest superpower of three short years ago to be the laughing stock of the world.

At a recent interview with liberal TV commentator Rachel Maddow, she said: “I want people to understand what a failure of leadership this is, and the reason he’s failing at it is because he’s incapable of succeeding at it. It (Leadership) would have required taking responsibility – which would, in his mind, have meant admitting a mistake, which in my family was essentially punishable by the death penalty, symbolic or otherwise. She says she has heard and deplores the racial slurs he constantly uses against African Americans, including the n….. word, his anti-Semitic and misogynistic slurs, and being a lesbian herself, his derogatory comments against the LGBTQ community.

The author opens her book with a quotation from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables:

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.

When asked by Chris Cuomo of CNN what she meant by this quotation, she said that when Donald was growing up, his grandfather provided the darkness, with his personality and his wealth, under which Donald committed his immoral and fraudulent sins. When he became president of the United States, she hoped that the “best people” he promised to employ in his administration would help him to get out of this darkness into the light of good governance.

Unfortunately, by demanding total loyalty from everyone who worked for him and getting rid of anyone who disagreed with him, Trump has now surrounded himself with a bunch of sycophantic enablers who continue to provide the darkness under which he has openly committed the most egregious of crimes, up to and including treason. Paradoxically, he is committing these crimes right in front of our eyes, obvious to everyone except his enablers (and his storied “base”) who have chosen to remain under the cover of this darkness, to achieve their own racist, political and financial ambitions. “To this day”, she writes, “the lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications that are the sum total of who my uncle is, are perpetuated by the Republican Party and white evangelical Christians…. The lies may become true in his mind as soon as he utters them, but they are still lies. It’s just another way for him to see what he can get away with. And so far, he’s gotten away with everything.”

“The atmosphere of division my grandfather created in the Trump family is the water in which Donald has always swum, and division continues to benefit him at the expense of everyone else. It’s wearing the country down…. changing us even as it leaves Donald unaltered.” The polarization of the country today is evidence of the success of Trump’s strategies of self-serving deception and distraction. “What I think we need to grapple with now is why so many people are continuing to allow it.”

On November 3, voters of America will have the choice to throw light on this darkness, to bring back democracy into a country whose national pride has been, since the drafting of the Constitution, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. National pride which has lost its way.

If voters continue to keep their eyes closed to the evil and the cruelty of this darkness in November, then Democracy would indeed have died in Darkness.

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Features

‘The devil is in the details’ in West Asian peace

Published

11 hours ago

2026/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Donald Trump at the current G7 summit in France. Evelyn Hockstein/Getty Image

It is obviously too early for an outpouring of joy over the seeming cessation of hostilities between the main antagonists in West Asia. While the prospect of there being a measure of calm in the region is being welcomed by considerable sections of the international community, what is ‘on the table’ currently is only a Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran to give peace a chance. The hard part in the peace effort remains to be achieved.

In the Middle East of today we have one of the most complex conflicts to break out in modern international politics and the observer would be naive in the extreme to expect a facile and early closure to the tangle. Yet, for the sake of the world’s publics who have been hurting badly in the prolonged hostilities one could only hope that the US-Iran MoU that is expected to be signed by the sides on Friday would lead eventually to a substantive peace. The world’s thanks are due to Pakistan in this connection for its sustained support in the peace drive.

While the sides have agreed to a ceasing of hostilities in the most general terms and have reached accord on the facilitation of uninterrupted oil and gas supplies to the rest of the world, for instance, the ‘devil will prove to be in the details’ in an envisaged comprehensive peace settlement. It is these details that would make or break peace if the negotiations go on in earnest.

Nevertheless, the details would need to be worked out consensually in a spirit of compromise with an eye to the greater good of the world community. Realpolitik or a narrow focus on solely the national interest among the protagonists, for example, would need to give way to a measure of humanity that would encompass within it a consideration of the overall well being of the world. In other words, it is statesmanship that would crucially matter.

The next few weeks would establish whether humanists are ‘asking for far too much’ when they broach the questions at issue in these terms. Yet it is essentially self interest and national security considerations of the first importance that drove the conflict from even prior to February this year and these questions would need to be taken up and resolved to the satisfaction of the US and Iran in the main if some headway is to be made towards a durable settlement.

The nuclear issue would prove to be the proverbial Gordian Knot. From a realistic viewpoint, Iran could not be expected to be without a potential nuclear deterrent in the face of perceived nuclear threats emanating for it from the West and Israel. In the short term, Iran would need to possess this deterrent to a measure, within a mutually agreed international legal framework maybe, until wide agreement is reached on the nuclear tangle. Specifically, Iran’s immediate threat perceptions with regard to her nuclear-powered rivals would need to be defused during initial negotiations.

Ideally it is a world free of nuclear weapons that must be aimed at but since this goal cannot be achieved in the near or medium terms, unfolding negotiations would need to ensure Iran’s absolute security in a world of powers that continue to swear by the nuclear deterrent, if it is to give up the suspected latter capability.

However, it is to the degree to which the present nuclear powers divest themselves of this capability that Iran could be put at ease on this score. Accordingly, it is nothing short of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the world that could dissuade keenly security conscious states from developing nuclear weapons of their own with a mass destruction capability.

This is the number one dilemma the international community needs to grapple with going forward and it is to the extent to which it resolves it that a nuclear weapons free world could be envisaged. No doubt, an uphill challenge.

Compelling Israel to support the present negotiatory process constitutes another grueling challenge for the US. Currently the Iranian position essentially is that a Middle East peace is inseparable from a normalization of the security situation in Lebanon. That is, the present Israeli attacks on the Hezbollah presence in Lebanon must cease if a comprehensive peace is to be realized in West Asia.

However, Israel is showing no signs of drawing back from its attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon since the security of the Israeli state is being seen as threatened by the militant group. Co-opting Israel into the negotiatory effort therefore would turn out to be a matter of paramount concern for the US.

Moreover, elements in the rightist administration in Israel are seeing the current peace efforts as a ‘sell out’ to the enemies of Israel. They would have none of it. It is left to be seen how the US would be managing these virtual storm centres in the diplomatic process that could very well bring down the overall purported peace drive.

A recent pronouncement by US Vice President J.D. Vance points to yet another problem area in the US’ current peace overtures. He said that, ‘Regional peace and stability includes stopping the funding of terrorist organizations.’ He was obviously referring to the support extended by Iran to Hezbollah when he mentioned ‘terrorist organizations’ but he has given fresh life to the age-old conundrum of ‘Who is a terrorist?’ by these words.

To the Netanyahu government the Hezbollah and other militant organizations fighting Israel are ‘terrorists’ but from the viewpoint of the Iranian regime they are ‘freedom fighters’. This seemingly insurmountable definitional issue would not only stubbornly bedevil the peace effort but could even figure in bringing about its collapse, unless judiciously handled.

Thus, it’s the thorny details that need to be watched to keep the West Asian peace process afloat, once it gets going in earnest. There is no doubt that US President Trump would be receiving a considerable amount of support from the G7 in this historic peace undertaking and his personal appeals to the grouping currently meeting in France for continuous support are likely to elicit a positive response from it.

Likewise, Trump would need to appeal to also the BRICS countries if almost total global support is to be garnered for the peace drive in West Asia. BRICS’ solidarity with the US and the West is likely to carry considerable weight with Iran and other Eastern actors who are key to a sustained peace drive in the Middle East.

Features

Sri Lanka’s elephant paradox: Govt. counts tourism dollars while playing a dangerous numbers game: Expert

Published

11 hours ago

2026/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

At a time when Sri Lanka is enjoying a resurgence in wildlife tourism, with elephants remaining the undisputed stars of the country’s national parks and one of its most marketable natural assets, elephant conservationist Supun Lahiru Prakash has sounded a stark warning: the nation is in danger of losing the very species that helps attract millions of tourism dollars while sustaining some of the island’s most important ecosystems.

Supun says repeated claims by authorities that Sri Lanka’s elephant population is increasing, despite the absence of a final survey report and amid continuing elephant deaths, risk creating a misleading narrative that could undermine conservation efforts and encourage retaliation against elephants.

According to Supun, the issue is not merely about numbers. It is about political priorities, scientific credibility and the future of one of Sri Lanka’s most iconic species.

“Repeatedly claiming that the elephant population is increasing appears to be an attempt to hide the Government’s inability to manage the rising annual elephant death rate and the complications of human-elephant conflict,” Supun said.

For decades, the Sri Lankan elephant has been a symbol of the country’s rich natural heritage. It is the centrepiece of wildlife tourism, drawing visitors from across the globe to national parks such as Yala, Udawalawe, Minneriya, Kaudulla and Wilpattu. International wildlife documentaries, tourism campaigns and social media promotions frequently place elephants at the heart of Sri Lanka’s nature tourism brand.

Yet, according to Supun, the country’s conservation policies do not reflect the value of the species.

“On one hand, the Government is enjoying increasing tourism revenue, and elephants remain one of Sri Lanka’s most important wildlife attractions. On the other hand, narratives are being promoted that could encourage retaliation against the very species that contributes significantly to the country’s tourism industry,” Supun said.

According to the First Countrywide National Survey of Elephants conducted in 2011, Sri Lanka had 5,879 elephants. However, official statistics show that 4,167 elephants died between 2012 and 2024.

Supun stressed that these figures represent only the deaths officially recorded by the Department of Wildlife Conservation.

“In a context where more than 70 percent of the country’s elephant population reported in 2011 has died within 13 years, it is difficult to accept claims that the population has increased,” Supun said.

The conservationist pointed out that elephants have the longest gestation period among land mammals and that scientific studies have reported increasing interbirth intervals among female elephants together with high calf mortality.

“When such biological realities are taken into consideration, claims of a dramatic increase in elephant numbers become difficult to understand,” Supun said.

Supun believes that repeated references to increasing elephant populations risk fuelling public hostility towards elephants, particularly among farming communities already affected by crop raids and property damage.

“Such claims can create the impression that elephant populations are exploding and thereby promote retaliation against elephants as well,” Supun said.

According to Supun, Sri Lanka’s elephant crisis cannot be understood solely through population estimates. The real issue lies in the country’s failure to address human-elephant conflict through long-term, science-based solutions.

Sri Lanka continues to record among the highest levels of human-elephant conflict in the world. Every year, hundreds of elephants and dozens of people lose their lives as competition for land and resources intensifies.

Despite the scale of the crisis, Supun says authorities continue to rely on strategies that have repeatedly failed.

Lahiru Prakash

These include driving elephants into protected areas, strengthening electric fences to confine them there and allocating additional manpower to maintain fencing systems.

Supun was also critical of several proposals that emerged from district-level discussions on conflict mitigation, including the sowing of paddy and corn using Air Force drones and the planting of fruit orchards within protected areas.

“Such proposals fail to address the real ecological and social dimensions of the conflict,” Supun said.

While welcoming reports that the Government intends appointing a national-level mechanism to tackle human-elephant conflict, Supun said the challenge required intervention at the highest level of government.

“Given the gravity, complexity and geographical spread of human-elephant conflict, appointing any committee other than a Presidential Task Force is not useful,” Supun said.

He argued that a Presidential Task Force chaired by either the President or the Secretary to the President would be better positioned to overcome the bureaucratic delays and institutional fragmentation that have hindered previous efforts.

Supun also stressed the urgent need to restore and protect elephant corridors and home ranges that allow elephants to move safely across landscapes.

He cited the Koholankala elephant corridor in Hambantota as one example where removing obstacles could help reduce conflict while improving habitat connectivity.

At the same time, Supun questioned policies that permit the allocation of forest lands in areas identified by environmental assessments as crucial elephant ranges and movement corridors.

“The opening of elephant corridors and the protection of elephant home ranges must be carried out scientifically and consistently if they are to succeed,” Supun said.

Beyond tourism, Supun emphasised the ecological importance of elephants.

“Elephants are ecosystem engineers. Through their feeding habits and movements, they help maintain habitats that support numerous other species. In many ways, they create safer and healthier environments for wildlife,” Supun said.

According to Supun, protecting elephants means protecting entire ecosystems and the biodiversity upon which Sri Lanka’s wildlife tourism industry depends.

“By protecting elephants, we are also protecting the biodiversity that makes Sri Lanka one of the world’s premier wildlife tourism destinations,” Supun said.

As Sri Lanka seeks to expand tourism earnings and strengthen its reputation as a wildlife destination, Supun believes the country faces a defining choice: continue with policies that have failed to stem elephant deaths and human-elephant conflict, or embrace a science-based conservation strategy that safeguards both people and wildlife.

Without a fundamental shift in policy and political will, Supun warned, Sri Lanka risks losing not only one of its most iconic species but also the ecological and economic benefits that elephants continue to provide.

“The suffering of both farmers and elephants will only intensify unless meaningful action replaces rhetoric,” Supun said.

By Ifham Nizam

Features

Top Model of the World 2026

Published

11 hours ago

2026/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

Back-to-back victory for Colombia

Katherine Castaño of Colombia claimed the Top Model of the World 2026 crown, securing a historic back-to-back victory for her country. Angelica Sanchez of Puerto Rico was named first runner-up, and Eunice Deza of the Philippines finished as second runner-up.

Katherine was crowned by outgoing titleholder Natalia Garizabal Vera of Colombia.

Several special category awards, and subsidiary titles, were also presented during the Top Model of the World 2026 pageant.

These awards recognised excellence in modelling, peer support, and regional representation.

Primary Subsidiary Titles

Sri Lanka’s Netalie Withanage: Top 16 at
the grand finale

Miss Globe 2026: Valentina Tabares (Ecuador) — Awarded to the contestant who perfectly balances fashion modelling with traditional beauty queen qualities.

Queen of Europe 2026: Mia Danielle Williams (United Kingdom) — Given to the highest-ranking candidate from a European nation.

Special Awards Recognition

Audience Iconic Award: Charly (Dominican Republic) — Won via the official public online vote, granting her a fast-track direct entry into the Top 6.

Exotic Model of the World: Angel Emeka (Nigeria) — Awarded for exceptional editorial presence and strong runway performance.

Best Body Award: Thailand — Voted directly by fellow contestants at the Flow Spectrum Hotel. The highest-ranking runners-up for this category included Zambia, South Africa, Colombia, and Ghana.

Angelica Sanchez (Puerto Rico): 1st Runner-up

Final Placement

Winner: Katherine Castaño (Colombia)

1st Runner-Up: Angelica Sanchez (Puerto Rico)

2nd Runner-Up: Eunice Deza (Philippines)

Top 6 Finalists: Included contestants from the Dominican Republic, Romania, and Germany.

The pageant, known for focusing on professional modelling careers over just beauty, brought together 36 models from around the globe for two weeks of runway, photoshoots, and cultural events.

Sri Lanka’s Netalie Withanage walked among 36 of the world’s best and powered her way into the Top 16 at the grand finale.