With every election year comes more and more book tours. Whether it’s First Lady Jill Biden and the children's books glorifying her husband, or a random relative reporting on the life of another candidate, there always seems to be opinions coming out of the woodwork in time for an election. The View from Tuesday morning did not disappoint as Fred Trump, nephew of Donald trump, came forward with his new book along with accusations against his uncle of racism and cruelty, something which was not questioned but applauded by the hosts.
From the moment of Trump’s announcement of his running for president, these attacks of his character began, many of them unchecked. It’s one thing to acknowledge a story as possibly legitimate, question both sides, and conclude in a non-partisan way. Yet, non-partisan behavior was never the agenda of ABC or The View, so it was no surprise when Fred Trump was glorified by all of the hosts, not one of them questioning the legitimacy of his arguments, instead joining Fred in bashing the former President:
TRUMP: I was very close, yeah. He was my trustee when my father passed away. That didn't work out so well.
[ Laughter ]
But --
BEHAR: You can't trust him. That's why.
SUNNY HOSTIN: He took your inheritance.
Trump continued explaining his book, highlighting a major accusation against his uncle, claiming the former President told Fred to let his disabled son die (click expand):
HAINES: Yes, in 1999, your son William was born with a rare genetic disorder causing severe developmental and intellectual disabilities and you spent years advocating for his care, eventually lobbying Donald to establish a medical fund for William, which he constantly replenished. But just a caveat, he had also taken your inheritance so he and his siblings. So that's why you were in this situation to start with, but later when you called to let him know this fund was running low, you say he made a shocking suggestion to you, so what did he say?
TRUMP: You know, it doesn't get any easier to recall this moment, but, yes, the fund, which was only necessary because my inheritance was taken away from me and Mary.
BEHAR: Because of him.
TRUMP: Because Donald hatched a plan. And he was my trustee, again. I called him to say, Donald, the fund is running low. And without skipping a beat, he said, “Your son doesn't recognize you, let him die, and move down to Florida.”
[ Audience reacts ]
Now I can't explain how anybody could say that about another human being, least of all your grandnephew.
A story which has yet to be confirmed by any other source is sad regardless of its validity, unfortunately, the culture in which we live sees no importance in disabled persons. Fred Trump’s love for his son and outlook for disabled persons as a whole is intrinsically Pro-Life.
The empathy which was shown by the hosts of The View was natural yet inconsistent as nearly all of the hosts promote abortion, and in the case of Ana Navarro promote the abortion of disabled children as well.
Regardless of the hypocrisy of this one facet of the segment, the interview as a whole, was one of glaring partisan slant, with all questions being softball promotion of an anti-Trump campaign. Fred’s claims were extremely serious and call for equally serious questioning, something which The View was not capable of.
The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:
ABC’s The View
07/30/2024
11:27:15 AM EST(...)
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Listen we’re just 98 days until the Presidential election. The nephew of the Republican candidate is breaking his long silence in a new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way. Please welcome Fred Trump. [ Cheers and applause ]
JOY BEHAR: So, welcome to the show.
FRED TRUMP: Thank you.
BEHAR: Nice to have you here.
TRUMP: Thank you.
BEHAR: There have been countless books about your uncle, all over the place. I mean even your sister Mary, who’s your younger sister, she came here to talk about her tell-all book back in 2020. Now, you have stated -- you have stayed quiet. You have not opened up about this at all until this book came out.
TRUMP: Right.
BEHAR: So, what made you decide to come out about it now?
TRUMP: Well, first of all, it's my story.
BEHAR: Right.
TRUMP: Told in a way -- I'm really the only one that was with Donald during his formative years through his business career, and through his time in the White House.
BEHAR: Oh, Mary was not?
TRUMP: No, I was close with Donald. He was the first guy that put a golf club in my hand.
BEHAR: I see.
TRUMP: But All in the Family was to honor my older father, Freddy Donald’s older brother, who was a caring, charismatic guy, and my son William, a child with complex disabilities, who is the most courageous and inspirational person I have ever met. And he opened the door for me to advocate on behalf of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. To tell their story, I needed to tell the story of the Trump family. Complex, sometimes cruel, you know, every family is complicated. Every family has their crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving table.
[ Laughter ]
Donald is atomic crazy. And I've seen it firsthand how he's evolved from crazy to atomic crazy. And I was thinking recently, I wish I had come out earlier with this book because the outpouring of people saying what we are doing to help the disabled has been overwhelming. So, I wish I had done that instead of -- what we did was important, but --
BEHAR: Well, you did it.
SARA HAINES: When it was the right time you got there. But your late father, Fred Trump Jr. Was the eldest of Donald Trump's siblings. He passed away in his early 40s due to complications from alcoholism. Since this is the first time Americans are really hearing from you, you know, you mentioned that your uncle was the first one to put a golf club in your hand. How close were you?
TRUMP: I was very close, yeah. He was my trustee when my father passed away. That didn't work out so well.
[ Laughter ]
But --
BEHAR: Well, you can't trust him. That's why.
SUNNY HOSTIN: He took your inheritance away.
TRUMP: See what I did, I let you in on it.
BEHAR: You did.
TRUMP: But, no we were close. Whenever I would call him, even when he was in the Oval Office, he would answer. He'd leave me messages for my -- me and my family on New Year's Eve. “Hi, this is your favorite President calling, wishing --” So we were close.
HAINES: But you call yourself a different kind of Trump, which sounds a little bit more like maybe your dad.
TRUMP: Oh I'm definitely like my father. There's no doubt. The good and the bad. Dad, again, was a very caring guy, who unfortunately wanted to live a dream and was crushed by his father, my grandfather, with Donald piling on. And that was tragic because dad - - if dad saw what I was trying to do now, he would have been the biggest fan of it and he would have been out there.
BEHAR: But gramps wouldn't have been.
TRUMP: No.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Well and I kind of want to ask about that. You spent a lot of time analyzing your uncle in the book and you say that, you know, this bombastic political force he became on you attribute that to a lot of your family dysfunction. You say your family puts the fun in dysfunction. Is the Donald Trump you grew up the same man you see now and how did his family influence this figure that we now know him as?
TRUMP: He was always driven, always driven. In fact, people have said, you know, this story is kind of like a Succession story, the television show. And I said no in that all three of the siblings wanted to take over from the father. My dad didn't want that. My Dad’s dream was to become an airline pilot, which he did. Donald and my grandfather disparaged him for that, in fact, Donald called him a, “Glorified bus driver.”
HOSTIN: Wow.
BEHAR: Jealous.
TRUMP: Well, I'd like to see Donald or maybe I wouldn't like to see Donald fly a plane.
FARAH GRIFFIN: No.
TRUMP: But Donald was always a driven guy. Hated to lose so when he's called a loser, that drives him nuts.
HOSTIN: Oh, that's good information, thank you. [ Laughter]
BEHAR: Its going to be rough in September for him.
TRUMP: It's going to be tough for him in November.
BEHAR: In November, I mean.
HOSTIN: Let me ask you this. Back in the 70s when you were a preteen you wrote about hearing your uncle Donald Trump use the worst racial slur, twice. While ranting to you about his car being damaged and you're not the first person to claim that Donald Trump trafficked in this kind of language, right?
TRUMP: Right.
HOSTIN: Though he continues to deny it, do you have any doubt that you heard that slur?
TRUMP: I was there. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever. Twice he used the "N" word. Now, to put it into context, and what troubles me even more than that is that he did not know who slashed the roof of his Eldorado.
GOLDBERG: He assumed.
TRUMP: He assumed.
HOSTIN: It was a black --
HAINES: The more revealing part.
TRUMP: And interesting, Sunny, about the same time I had a bike stolen. I grew up in Jamaica - - we all grew up in Jamaica, Queens. I - - me and my grandparents and Donald and my father in Jamaica Estates, regardless, I had a bike stolen by three black kids. And unfortunately my dad wasn't around at the time, so the police called and said we found your bike. My mom asked Donald if he could go to the police station with me. And they had this kid and I remember he was my age, and Donald was -- he absolutely wanted to see this kid put in jail. And as wise as I possibly could be at 10 years old, I said I don't want to ruin this kid's life. Just think of what that is going to do to this kid, you know?
BEHAR: He didn’t care.
TRUMP: I got the bike back. I'm fine with it. Flash forward 17 years later, Central Park Five, five kids who were found, were exonerated, he screamed out for the death penalty in a full page ad.
(...)
11:38:23 AM EST
GOLDBERG: Welcome back. We're here with Fred Trump, Sara has the first question.
HAINES: Yes. In 1999, your son William was born with a rare genetic disorder causing severe developmental and intellectual disabilities and you spent years advocating for his care, eventually lobbying Donald to establish a medical fund for William, which he constantly replenished. But just a caveat, he had also taken your inheritance so he and his siblings. So that's why you were in this situation to start with. But later when you called to let him know this fund was running low, you say he made a shocking suggestion to you, so what did he say?
TRUMP: You know, it doesn't get any easier to recall this moment, but, yes, the fund, which was only necessary because my inheritance was taken away from me and Mary.
BEHAR: Because of him.
TRUMP: Because of Donald hatched a plan.
HAINES: And you were siblings.
TRUMP: And he was my trustee, again. I called him to say, Donald, the fund is running low. And without skipping a beat, he said, “Your son doesn't recognize you, let him die, and move down to Florida.”
[ Audience reacts ]
Now I can't explain how anybody could say that about another human being, least of all your grandnephew.
BEHAR: A blood relative.
TRUMP: A blood relative and Donald had never met William. He didn't understand --
BEHAR: Let him die?
TRUMP: The inspiration William is to people. Anyone who William meets and if you look at the smiles that he has, he is quite something.
BEHAR: That tells you a lot about the man, doesn't it?
TRUMP: Yeah, it's --
BEHAR: And his policies will let people die also.
TRUMP: Yeah. Yeah, they're -- as I call them, the “Merry and of Miscreants" that he surrounds himself with in Washington.
BEHAR: That’s right. Well hopefully we're going to get him out of office. So in the book, you reveal that you did not vote for your Uncle in 2016 or 2020. I think Mary also did not, right?
TRUMP: Right.
BEHAR: She said - -she has said famously that, “There is not one redeeming quality about this man.” And both times you voted for the Democrat. So is it too much of an imposition to ask you who you're going to vote for in 2024?
TRUMP: I believe in policy over politics.
BEHAR: Yeah.
TRUMP: And without question, Kamala Harris' policies are what I get behind, so I will be voting for Kamala Harris.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And if I'm asked, I will campaign for her without hesitation.
BEHAR: Good.
FARAH GRIFFIN: And if I could ask quickly, if Donald Trump loses -- you noted in 2021 he lost. He hates losing. We saw what happened on January 6th. If he loses again should we be fearful of what the consequences will be and what he might incite his followers to do.
TRUMP: I don't know what the consequences is, but he ain't going anywhere. So, just – he's not going any -- he will not take it.
FARAH GRIFFIN: You think he'll run again?
TRUMP: Yes.
BEHAR: If Kamala wins we're in charge of the National Guard.
FARAH GRIFFIN: But state capitals, there's a lot to consider.
HOSTIN: I have a legal note. In a statement to ABC News the Trump campaign wrote, quote, “This is completely fabricated and total fake news of the highest order. It is appalling, a lie so blatantly disgusting can be printed in the media. Anyone who knows President Trump knows he would never use such language and false stories like this have been thoroughly debunked.”
TRUMP: Thanks for the publicity, I appreciate it.
GOLDBERG: You know what, I want to add something because I'm just -- I'm listening to the book but I don't think we have to fear anything. I don't think anybody needs to live in fear of anyone in this country. We have -- we can do what we need to do but we don't need to be afraid. I don't want anybody feeling like they can't or they're -- what is he going to do – because there are more of us than there are of him.
[ Applause ]
So, our thanks to Fred Trump. The book, his memoir, All in the family: The Trumps and how we got this way is available now. You can get it also on audible, cause Fred is reading it.
(...)
