Trump's niece issues 'alarming' warning over the President's behaviour

Mary Trump is Donald Trump's niece. She's a psychologist and she's a longtime critic of her uncle. Today, she was able to join me in the studio where I began by asking whether his use of American technology as a weapon against people he disagreed with outside the USA was a moment for widespread rethinking of relationships. First of all, Andrew, it's so wonderful to see you in person and be here. Unfortunately, this is where we are, though, in terms of what's happening. in the world because of the chaotic, I don't know if leadership is the right word, but the chaotic rule of Donald Trump. I think this has been a long time coming and it's a little surprising that it's taken so long for people to catch up. It's not just Donald imposing his will, it's Donald's being willing to impose his will on behalf of malign actors like Vladimir Putin, for example. Do you understand why politics at his level has become so personalized? He clearly has something going on with Vladimir Putin, just like he clearly loathes President Zelensky. He's always been into dominance and he's always played a zero sum game. And I think what we see playing out and have seen playing out for a long time now is his identification with people who, in his view, have total power, which is the only way to be strong in his view. And he has nothing but disdain for Democratic leaders who understand the importance of diplomacy, statecraft and compromise, because he considers all of those things weaknesses. And now it's playing out in a way that's tragic and obscene, quite frankly. I was talking to Luke Harding, very, very experienced foreign correspondent for The Guardian. He's been around a long time, been in Russia a long time, knows the Putin regime pretty well. And he is convinced that President Putin has something, has compromised on Donald Trump. Do you agree with that? I think at this point, that is undoubtedly true. I just don't know that it matters anymore because Donald is so entirely in Putin's pocket and his, I don't want to say values, but his goals align with Putin's goals. Also, because of the way things are going in America, I think Donald is beyond being taken down by some lascivious video of him, no matter how despicable, because he has conditioned his followers to accept any horror he's willing to commit. This is emperor to emperor in a sense. But I think a lot of people have noticed a new level of heedlessness or aggression or whatever you describe it as in the last few weeks. He's becoming more angry, more Trump than he's been before. And I wonder if this is because midterms are coming closer and he's frankly scared either of the loss of face or what happens to him in terms of being impeached if he loses both houses of Congress. And this is coming closer and closer. Absolutely. The midterm elections in America in less than three weeks now look to be a massive defeat for Republicans. I don't want to say for sure that that's what's going to happen, But that's what it looks like. And that will be a massive defeat for Donald because it will expose him to accountability and investigations in the way he has been not bit because the Republicans have been in charge of everything. So it's sort of a perfect storm of his deterioration cognitively, emotionally and psychologically. You know, you mentioned the ways he's acting out his disinhibition, his lack of impulse control, his self-aggrandizement and combined all of those things with his desperation. And that makes for a very volatile mix. I am frankly losing concentration on aspects of this story because it's so big. But is there an Epstein file aspect to this as well? Yeah, I don't know if your viewers heard about this, but Donald gave a rally in Ohio and a protester stood up and said, release the Epstein files. And she was wearing a T-shirt that said that, which she was exercising her First Amendment rights. The crowd, people in the crowd started beating her up and Donald egged them on. Christopher Columbus should not be in Columbus, Ohio. Paid protest. These are paid protests and they're all paid. They get paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country. They're scum. But he's going back home to mom. He's going back home to mom. Look at him. Terrible. He's got to go on a diet. He's a fat... We're going on a diet, man. We all do. They're paid protestors. That's a very low class protest. What he doesn't know is that his mother and father voted for him. So clearly that is something that is under his skin for sure. Let me ask about another aspect of your uncle's behavior. And I want to choose my words very carefully because there is something almost childish in what he's doing at the moment. We had a tragic case here of a man jumping, a man who is mentally unwell, jumping into the enclosure of a Siberian tiger and getting mauled to death. And the President of the United States reacted to this story by releasing an AI-generated video of him wrestling with the same tiger. I just found that, I mean, you know, I have got fairly high levels of amazement fatigue these days, but even I was just completely flabbergasted. Yeah, I think even though we should never be surprised by anything he does, we should reserve the right to be shocked. Now, what he did by releasing the video of that tragedy was just unspeakable anyway. It showed complete disregard for the family or the impact it could have on people watching it. But his video of himself killing a tiger as if that's a thing that could ever happen points to what you're talking about. This level of prepubescent arrogance and this sense of his own mortality, immortality, I should say, and his completely warped idea that he is the killer his father always wanted him to be. It's all playing out. So given that he thinks of himself as a killer, given that the huge electoral pressure is really on him now, what is your worst fear about what happens if he loses badly in the midterms? There won't be sufficient power to rein him in. That's why I think it's extremely important, especially if the Democrats win in the midterms and get majorities and can start holding him accountable and slowing down the process of his degradation of America and our alliances. But also other countries need to start reining him in. And hopefully what's happening in Ukraine is a wake up call. Well, I was going to ask you about other countries because this is a genuinely perilous moment. So how do you think other countries, other Western nations in particular, should react to it? They need to disabuse themselves of the notion that capitulating to him is going to get them anything, because clearly they've tried that. And what does he do? He goes he goes against his word. He does whatever he wants to do anyway. And he continues to erode our alliances. He is much more aligned with Putin and Kim Jong Un than he is with any of our NATO allies. And he has betrayed Ukraine in a way that is obscene. So world leaders need to come together and recognize that the only way to mitigate the damage he's doing is to try to stop him at every turn and not give in to him. Thank you so much for coming in for what has been candidly an alarming conversation, Mary Trump. Thank you so much. Thank you.