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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
In this next segment, we’re joined by the nephew of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has endorsed Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Fred Trump III is the son of the former president’s late older brother, Fred Trump Jr., who died of complications from alcoholism in 1981 at the age of 42.
Fred Trump writes about his [uncle], former President Donald Trump, in his new memoir titled All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way. On page one, Fred writes, quote, “I have a name — Trump — that is extraordinarily polarizing, and keeps getting more so. But there is more to my name than all that friction, and I am ready to use it for something good. A cause near and dear to my heart: advocating for individuals with developmental disabilities. But we’ll get to that in a bit,” unquote.
Fred Trump’s son William suffered from severe seizures when he was born in 1999 and has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. He’s now living in a group home. But at one point when Fred Trump was lobbying his uncle Donald to replenish a medical fund for William, Donald reportedly told him, quote, “Your son doesn’t recognize you. Let him die, and move down to Florida.” Well, Fred Trump also says President Trump once told him as they sat in the Oval Office that disabled Americans “should just die.”
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has referred to eugenics and the racehorse theory, suggesting he sees himself as genetically superior. Previously, Donald Trump came under fire for mocking a disabled reporter. In 2015, when he was running for president, Trump mocked Serge Kovaleski, a reporter who suffers from a congenital condition that impairs the movement of his joints.
DONALD TRUMP: Written by a nice reporter. Now, the poor guy — you got to see this guy. “Oh, I don’t know what I said. Uh, I don’t remember!” He’s going like, “I don’t remember! Ah, oh, maybe that’s what I said.” This is 14 years ago. He’s still — they didn’t do a retraction.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump is moving his hands spastically — for a radio audience that can’t see him — as he mocks this New York Times reporter. He later said he never met Kovaleski, but the reporter said he had spent a lot of time with Trump while working at the Daily News and covering Trump’s 1989 launch of an airline.
Fred Trump’s memoir also recounts how he witnessed Donald Trump using racial slurs decades ago, which Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung has called, quote, “fake news of the highest order.”
Well, to discuss all this, Fred Trump III joins us now here in our New York studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
FRED TRUMP III: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about William. Tell us about your son, when he was born, and about his life. He’s now what? Twenty-five.
FRED TRUMP III: Twenty-five, which makes me about a hundred. Thank you for asking about William, by the way. It makes me feel great to tell him. He is the most courageous and inspirational person I have ever met.
As you mentioned, he was born with severe seizures as a baby in 1999. We found out — my wife Lisa is a tremendous detective. It took her 15 years of searching the internet to find out that he had a genetic mutation called KCNQ2. And the first years were really tough, especially the first. He was in hospital for seven total weeks. We didn’t know what his future would be like, but it certainly — certainly came to pass what it would. William is wheelchair-bound. He needs assistance with everything he does, like millions of people in this country.
What William’s condition has given me the opportunity to, if I do have some sort of national platform, is to go out and advocate on behalf of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And I don’t know if I could draw any parallel with what we just heard with Arwa, but people ask, “Is he medically OK?” William is doing fine medically. He’s on very intense seizure medications still to this day. But we struggle with finding a meaningful day program for William. Many people don’t realize this, but when you age out of school, you’re pretty much left on your own in terms of therapies and stuff.
Again, to go back to Arwa, where she brought up the point when you were able to give these kids some — they had some hope. They had some meaning put back in their lives. That’s one of the things that we’re trying to do: give the complex disabled a reason to be part of the community and give something back, not necessarily a paying thing, but to do something that will help other people. It gives them such purpose.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, go back to when he was born. At the time, you were fighting with Donald to get him healthcare?
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah. In the beginning, the family was very supportive. Now, keep in mind, they never visited, and William was born in Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. Everybody in the family, my aunts and uncles, lived within walking distance of Mount Sinai. They never visited. They really never called. But they did agree to put William on the family Trump Organization medical plan, which was very much appreciated, obviously. His expenses were out of control. But if you remember back then, Donald was in very bad financial straits. And when William finally came home after seven total weeks of hospitalizations in two different hospitals, we realized, from a letter that Donald’s attorney sent, that that medical care, the insurance would be cut, and we were, in essence, also taken out of my grandfather’s will, my sister Mary and I.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second, Trump’s lawyer told you that your severely disabled infant would be cut from the Trump Organization’s healthcare?
FRED TRUMP III: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, has Donald Trump ever met William?
FRED TRUMP III: Never.
AMY GOODMAN: In 25 years?
FRED TRUMP III: Never, never. Never asked him.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you’re not estranged from him. You’ve been to the Oval Office. You’ve been with Donald Trump many times.
FRED TRUMP III: When Donald was elected, my wife — again, Lisa — knew we would have an opportunity to advocate on this very important cause. And Lisa reached out to Ivanka, my cousin, who was a — in the — I don’t know what her exact title was, but working in the White House. And she set up a first meeting with Ben Carson, with a group that we had been aligned with called Equally Alive. And for the next several years, we would go down periodically to meet Alex Azar —
AMY GOODMAN: Head of HHS at the time.
FRED TRUMP III: Head of HHS, and several other departments within the government, to see if we could move things along. And I had the pleasure of being an intern for Geraldine Ferraro in 1983, so I kind of knew what the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., was about. And we found that out the hard way, that not much was accomplished in the three-plus years that we attempted to.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what happened when Donald Trump was president? You met with Donald Trump and this organization in the Oval Office.
FRED TRUMP III: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And then they left, and you were with Donald Trump.
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah. So, we had been — the meeting lasted longer than I thought, about 45 minutes. You know, Donald has the attention span of about — I thought it was going to be five or 10 minutes. And we put forward some ideas, one of which was efficiency, prevention will lower costs — lower costs — for providing help to this community and give better services. The meeting ended. Everybody left, including myself, but I got a tap on the shoulder a minute later from Donald’s assistant, saying, “Your uncle would like to see you again.”
So, he greets me with the typical, “Hey, pal, how’s it going?” And I sit down, and Alex Azar is in there. And he said, “Those people, the costs. They should just die.” I was just thankful that the group of people were not in there to hear that. I don’t know how you — I keep saying this.
AMY GOODMAN: Those people being —
FRED TRUMP III: The Equally Alive —
AMY GOODMAN: — disabled people.
FRED TRUMP III: No, the advocates on behalf of — fortunately, there was nobody who was — I don’t think he would have let —
AMY GOODMAN: Who was he saying should die?
FRED TRUMP III: The disabled people, people with complex disabilities, because the costs to government were such that — you used the word “eugenics.” I have yet to use that in an interview. But yeah, I mean, that’s — to me, that’s what eugenics was. You know, you don’t measure up, you get slammed out, and that’s it.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is something that Donald Trump said to you as early — as late as just last year, is that right?
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: When it came to William?
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: When you were trying — well, explain. You were trying to get support. And why do you have to keep turning to Donald Trump to get support, financial support?
FRED TRUMP III: I understand that. My uncle Robert had passed away in 2020.
AMY GOODMAN: There were five kids in the family.
FRED TRUMP III: Five kids: Maryanne, my father, Elizabeth, Donald and Robert. And for years, they were very, very supportive. Now, keep in mind, I won’t get in — I don’t think we have the time to get into the whole lawsuit issue and how, actually, that was my money that I was asking for, regardless.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about with your grandfather, Fred Trump, after he died —
FRED TRUMP III: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — instead of dividing it in five parts, the —
FRED TRUMP III: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — family fortune, they cut out your father.
FRED TRUMP III: They cut out my father.
AMY GOODMAN: And that meant you and Mary, your sister —
FRED TRUMP III: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: — and divided between the four of them?
FRED TRUMP III: Exactly. So, the medical fund was set up in around 2009. Lisa and I went to Donald first, because I had the — I didn’t have any relationship with my aunts and uncles after the lawsuit. Donald, graciously, came to me, and we reconciled, if you will. So, yeah, the medical fund was being depleted because Robert’s widow didn’t want to do it anymore. Maryanne was balking at doing it. And what Maryanne says, Elizabeth went along —
AMY GOODMAN: Maryanne became the federal judge in New Jersey.
FRED TRUMP III: Maryanne, the federal judge, right. So, Eric — I went to Eric. Eric was really good with Lisa and me and sort of being the interface with William’s medical fund. But it was being depleted, and we really only had Donald to go to. So, Eric said, “Call up DJT.” And I call him up on the phone, and Donald always was great at answering the call for me, even when he was president. And I said, you know, “I need your help. We’re running out of money in the fund.” And he goes, as you said before, “He doesn’t recognize you. Let him die, and move down to Florida.” And it took me a couple of seconds to say, “No, he does recognize me.” And what I really wanted to say was, “You’ve never met him before. You never asked to meet him. So how would you know?” And you have to say, how could one human being say that about any other human being, least of all your grandnephew?
AMY GOODMAN: So, the title of your book is All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way. How did he, you all get this way? I mean, you’re talking about outright cruelty and discrimination.
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah. Yeah. My grandfather, Fred Sr., was a very driven guy, which is great. I mean, he created more apartment buildings in Brooklyn, second most in Queens. It wasn’t a very loving family. The word “love” was rarely thrown around, no hugs and kisses really. And Donald was, as I say, the obnoxious one in the family. My father was the caring, charismatic guy. Donald was the young bully, if you will.
And success meant everything to my grandfather. And my father was supposed to be the golden child. He was, again, young and good-looking and personable. But my dad didn’t want anything to do the family business. He tried it. He hated it. He wanted to be an airline pilot, and he became an airline pilot. And years later, I got my pilot’s license also, because of — not because of him. I admired him for that. And my grandfather and Donald did not like that. Donald called him a glorified bus driver. And my dad, unfortunately, took to heavy drinking, and in the end, that’s really what killed him.
AMY GOODMAN: And he died at the age of?
FRED TRUMP III: Forty-two. Yeah, I was a sophomore in college. Obviously, I remember that day like it was yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: And amazingly, you flew back on the very kind of plane, TWA.
FRED TRUMP III: TWA 707 into JFK.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, Donald Trump was in the news once again this week because of an Arlington National Cemetery employee who was being targeted and pushed because Donald Trump wanted to be there with his videographers to take a picture in the cemetery, that isn’t allowed, in Section 60. This brought back memories of what he did and what a number of sources said he did when he was president, outside the cemetery in Paris, not wanting to — canceling a trip to a cemetery —
FRED TRUMP III: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — American cemetery, because he said the soldiers who were buried there were losers.
FRED TRUMP III: Right. And he didn’t want to get his hair wet.
Just as an aside, my father, when he was at Lehigh University, joined ROTC. He also was in the Air National Guard, voluntarily, the only Trump family member to have served.
I was sitting right in front of Senator McCain during the inauguration. And Lisa and Andrea and Christopher, my two older kids, were there also. When the ceremony was over — and I remember the Frank Luntz interview with Donald. In fact, I was with Frank the other day, and I really wanted to get his take on what happened that day. Anyway, when the ceremony was over, I said, “Kids, I want to introduce you to somebody.” I don’t use the word “hero” often. I think we have cheapened the definition of “hero.” We definitely cheapened the definition of “patriot.” I said, “This man is an American hero.” And Senator McCain, after what Donald had said, I said, “Sir, Fred Trump. I just wanted to tell you, you’re a hero.” And if there was one proud moment with my kids and my wife of that inauguration, it was that.
AMY GOODMAN: You have endorsed Kamala Harris to be president.
FRED TRUMP III: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What most concerns you if your uncle Donald Trump returns to the White House as president?
FRED TRUMP III: We’ve all heard, and some of us have read, Project 2025. And he will say he had nothing to do with it. And I sort of half-joke, “Yeah, that’s like him saying, 'I had nothing to do with building Trump Tower.'” His hands are all over that. It’s a dystopian, dangerous view of what the future might be, but it really is just going back decades to what this country could be. And I say it in the book that, you know, my family was sort of like a '50s sitcom. The ’50s weren't just Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. They were lots of bad things.
And I believe it’s in the foreword where it talks about public education. That’s going to affect the disabled community in a bad way. It’s going to affect minority children in a bad way. I think it will be a very dangerous time if he’s reelected. And again, I believe in policy over politics, and that’s why I’ve always been a Democrat. But so did Donald, as you know. But the Harris campaign and her positions are ones I believe in. Now, that being said, I have yet to hear anything regarding disability actions that I deem, obviously, important, and I will put their feet to the fire on this.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, you talk about hearing Donald Trump use the N-word decades ago, your uncle, when he got mad.
FRED TRUMP III: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: He also, with this father, sued for discriminating against people of color, African Americans, being allowed in their housing projects in Queens.
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah. I mean, I was there that day. I was at my grandparents’ house, as I often was when I was a kid. I grew up in a Trump apartment building — no minorities, by the way. And I was kicking a soccer ball around, and I heard him just shout out twice the N-word. And I went back, and there was his white El Dorado, red —
AMY GOODMAN: This is Donald Trump.
FRED TRUMP III: Donald — red interior, black top with two slash marks. And he had a roll of black electrical tape. And —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.
FRED TRUMP III: Yeah. It’s kind of a pattern, where — the word was disgusting, but the fact that he didn’t know who did it was also disgusting. The fact — when you go back to Serge Kovaleski, the fact that he mocked that reporter was gross; the fact that the crowd yucked it up also, so I have to wonder what’s in their hearts. You know, they obviously don’t have a family member who has disabilities.
AMY GOODMAN: Fred Trump III is the nephew of former President Donald Trump, current presidential candidate. But Fred Trump is the author of a new memoir about his family. It’s titled All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
