President Donald Trump's niece is publicly mocking the president after he gave a strange answer to a basic question: Was he going to attend his own son's wedding?
Mary Trump, a frequent critic of her uncle, used her Substack newsletter Trump Trolls Trump on Saturday to skewer the president over his response to reporters who asked about Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding to Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas.
Trump's answer, in the words his niece quoted, was difficult to parse.
"He'd like me to go, but it's going to be just a small little private affair and I'm going to try and make it," Trump said, according to Mary. "I'm in the midst. I said, 'This is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things. That's one I can't win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed.'"
Trump then added a line about his son and Anderson that has drawn its own scrutiny.
"But he's got a very person who I've known for a long time and hopefully they're going to have a great marriage," the president said.
Mary Trump did not let any of that go.
"Apparently, very small weddings sometimes exclude the groom's father," she wrote. "Apparently Donald has 'known' his son Donnie for 'a long time,' which I assumed was implied in the parent child relationship. And apparently attending your child's wedding is now politically controversial."
She then suggested that her uncle may genuinely skip the wedding because he is more interested in something else entirely.
"The thing is, I actually believe Donald may skip the wedding because he is far too busy talking to reporters about his ballroom," she wrote.
She closed the broadside with a direct message to her cousin.
"So, sorry Donnie. Keep trying. Maybe one day your father will discover basic human attachment," she wrote.
Mary Trump, a psychologist who has written multiple books about her uncle and her family, has been one of the loudest voices in the broader Trump family criticizing the president. Saturday's column adds another scene to a family rift that has played out publicly for years.