His father, Fred Trump, Sr., was formally diagnosed with dementia in 1991, when he was about 86 years old. He continued working and attending his office up until the day he went to the hospital. Fred senior passed away at age 93 in 1999 with his official cause of death attributed to Pneumonia and Alzheimer's. At that point, he had lived with the illness for at lest eight years.
The following quote from a review of Mary L. Trump's book on Donald entitled: "Too much and never enough" which shows some of the things the Trump family was trying to hide.
Book reviewer Ceridwin Dovey wrote the following in 2020:
"So, this was fascinating.
"I don’t really know much about Donald Trump to be honest – not about his backstory, not about his time in the 1980s and 90s developing swathes of Manhattan. I was a child in the 80s and the early half of the 90s and I’ve never watched an episode of The Apprentice or Celebrity Apprentice. I don’t really like reality shows – what I knew about him before 2015 or so really just amounted to reading a few articles in gossip magazines about his various divorces, seeing him in a few cameos (Home Alone, The Nanny, WWE of all places) and the weird way he seemed to be oddly attracted to his own daughter. It wasn’t until he emerged as a seemingly credible chance of becoming the Republican nominee for president, did I start paying attention. I hadn’t before, because I hadn’t thought it would be possible. And then well, despite what the polls said, despite the fact that he appears hopelessly unqualified, out of his depth and actually, not that intelligent, he won. And yikes.
"As you may have guessed, I’m not a fan. We do not align politically and I find his personality repulsive. But at the same time, it’s hard not to be curious about him. How on earth does someone with seemingly so little ability go so far? People keep saying he’s a genius, that he’s actually really smart, that he’s a billionaire…..but he has an average education, was bankrolled by an extremely wealthy father who had accumulated assets worth almost $1b, and seems to have more failures than successes. I didn’t know much about his family before this so I thought it’d be interesting. And it certainly was.
"There’s actually a large portion of this book where I felt sorry for Donald Trump. It’s possible that both his parents were sociopaths – it seems as though his father, Fred Trump Sr, certainly was. A seemingly cold, emotionless man who didn’t concern himself with the parenting or nurturing of his children, he worked long hours and left the raising of them to his wife. When she was significantly ill when Donald was about 2 (she nearly died) it seems as though the children were mostly left to fend for themselves. For months. They had a housekeeper and a grandmother who ensured they were fed and clothed but seemingly little else. That sort of neglect in a person’s formative years, surely does something to a child. And perhaps Donald is intelligent in that he seemed to astutely guess what pleased their father (a hard man) and what did not. His sort of sly coping mechanism was to ridicule his older brother Freddy, a shyer personality who also earned his father’s scorn. Supposedly the heir apparent, it didn’t take long for Fred Snr to decide he favoured Donald’s more brash, bullying personality who showed no weakness and tolerated no one laughing at him. Freddy was Mary’s father and he died young at 42 – he had physical ailments, revolving around his heart but he was also a hard alcoholic and it’s pretty clear that Mary believes her father was driven to drink by his own father, Fred Snr’s treatment of him, his high expectations but then also his ridicule.
"Does Mary Trump have an axe to grind in this? Almost certainly. Her father died, after years of being mocked, ridiculed, treated like a servant and what’s even worse was the way he was basically erased from the family after he died – like dying was a weakness that Fred Snr couldn’t tolerate. She and her brother were also wiped from the grandfather’s will – when he died, the 20% of their father’s share that should’ve been left to them, was redistributed to the other siblings. They were bullied and hoodwinked, lied to and ostracised by the other family members when they wanted to look into their options. The man was worth almost a billion dollars, but they begrudged them basically anything – money does things to people. It certainly did a lot to this family – despite Donald’s lavish lifestyle, the father wasn’t like that. He operated his businesses in an entirely different way, which makes his indulging of Donald constantly, so strange. He was obviously very smart, Fred Snr – he took advantage of a lot of post-WWI schemes to stimulate the economy and was able to secure large interest free loans to develop properties he already owned for housing, he didn’t go into debt or borrow heavily. In fact he was very adamant about not doing that – but in the 80s when Donald decided the new market in Manhattan was the direction they should go in, he funnelled large amounts of cash into Donald’s projects and Donald also borrowed incredibly heavily, owing hundreds of millions of dollars to banks 30 years ago. At one point in this, Mary discusses how the banks had a meeting and put Donald on a “450k a month allowance” because they needed to preserve his perceived lifestyle, so investors and the like didn’t lose confidence. It’s mind-boggling.
"In reading this, it’s actually not hard anymore, to see how Donald Trump became Donald Trump, man who never does anything wrong. The man who takes no advice, doesn’t learn from anything and who seems to lack anything remotely resembling compassion and empathy. The man who calls veterans “losers” and waves a hand at 200,000+ Americans who died of coronavirus. As an example, when Mary’s father was dying, Donald and one of his sisters went to the movies. Because that’s normal behaviour.
"This family is a clusterfuck. They’ve all been seemingly complicit in tax fraud and evasion, in trying to screw each other over – after all it seems to be what they were taught. Fred Snr seemed to enjoy pitting his children against each other to try and win any scrap of approval from him and even as grown adults well into their middle years, they seemed to still be trying to win it. If you’re looking for a book that’s primarily about Donald Trump and the presidency, the decisions he’s made and how he’s made them, this one isn’t it. This is about the family, his formative years, the unhealthy emotional environment they seem to have been raised in and the blatant favouritism that Fred Snr developed for Donald and how bankrolling him constantly definitely played into the Trump of now who is incapable of taking responsibility for anything, who insists that “no one has handled the pandemic better than he” or who blames Obama or Hillary for everything. And obviously don’t read this if you’re a fan of Trump. There’s very little in the way of positive things about him, here."
I've just ordered this book for my kindle and will learn a lot from it.
I myself have Alzheimer's and I'm in the later stages of this condition. But I am certainly not trying to hide details of my condition nor am I making decisions that can affect the lives of so many people. My work is all behind me now. I had to give up my employment in 2019 because of Alzheimer's symptoms even though my formal diagnosis did not occur until January 2025. (This happened after I had asked for such testing many, many times.)
Donald has been out of the public eye for 5 days now and I feel that could well be because he knows his limitations are becoming clear to everyone and being able to admit to any personal weaknesses at all is impossible to him.
With the recent ruling on tariffs yesterday, trump is going to have to be more public and will have to answer a lot more questions. His life is going to be very, very painful from here on out, I believe.
I urge you to help others learn of his probable dementia disorder, whether it may be Alzheimer's or another condition! We can't entrust the running of our government to someone to someone so incompetent but yet shielded by toadies, enablers and the general media. This isn't a game -- the world hangs in the balance.
Any reactions to this would be greatly received!
Originally Posted By u/Kalepa At 2025-08-30 05:48:39 PM | Source
