He never has made a living. He went from my grandparents' house to the very regimented military school, back to the house, to my grandfather's company, to the Trump Organization, which I view as a sinecure for him. And then 'The Apprentice,' whatever that was, and the White House.
No one knows how Donald came to be who he is better than his own family. Unfortunately, almost all of them remain silent out of loyalty or fear. I'm not hindered by either of those.
All the kids - well, I don't know about the girls in the family, but all the boys - worked in my grandfather's office in the summers and maybe on weekends once in a while, so they saw how he operated. They saw how he treated people. They saw the kinds of people he rubbed elbows with.
The traits my grandfather came to value in Donald were the traits that were a result of my grandfather's maltreatment of Donald - the bullying, the tendency not to care about other people's feelings, the willingness to cheat, lie to get what he wanted. And eventually, my grandfather started to see a kindred spirit.
That's what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends - ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance.
For Donald, lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was.
I think the simplest way to put it is to say that Donald continues to need to prove to his father that he's the tough guy, the killer, the best, you know, that he's winning all the time, and above all, that he's not weak. And the ways to be weak in my family were to be kind, to admit mistakes, and to apologize.
For the first forty years of his real estate career, my grandfather never acquired debt. In the 1970s and '80s, however, all of that changed as Donald's ambition grew larger and his missteps became more frequent.
In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero - being good - is impossible for him.
The divisive environment my grandfather created in the family is the water that Donald has always swum in, and that division continues to benefit him at the expense of everyone else.
I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist - he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' (DSM-5) - but the label gets us only so far.
Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.
Besides being driven around Manhattan by a chauffeur whose salary his father's company paid, in a Cadillac his father's company leased to 'scope out properties,' Donald's job description seems to have included lying about his 'accomplishments' and allegedly refusing to rent apartments to Black people.
Donald learned that you can never admit you're wrong. That was considered a weakness... it's a kind of toxic positivity, there was no admitting pain, there was no admitting weakness.
From a fairly young age, Donald had a really hard time reading social cues. You know, the rules in the house, my grandparents' house were very different from the rules in school. So, he had a difficult time adjusting to that.
I, along with everybody else, had bought into the myth of Donald being a self-made man and being a brilliant developer. I had no idea that none of that was true because everybody acted like it was true.