Fred C. Trump III, the son of former President Donald Trump’s older brother has recounted an incident in his new memoir regarding the Trump family during which he claims the Republican presidential nominee freely spouted racial epithets via Mediaite.
The Guardian has shared excerpts of Trump’s upcoming book, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, on Wednesday, including one that the younger Trump said he witnessed as a preteen:
Fred C Trump III describes in detail a stunning moment he says happened in the early 1970s at the house of his grandparents, Donald Trump’s parents, in Queens, New York.
It was “just a normal afternoon for preteen me,” Trump III writes, but then his uncle arrived.
“Donald was pissed,” Trump III writes. “Boy, was he pissed.”
Trump says his uncle showed him his “cotillon white Cadillac Eldorado convertible.” In its retractable canvas top, “there was a giant gash, at least two feet long [and] another, shorter gash next to it.”
“‘N******,’ I recall him saying disgustedly. ‘Look at what the n****** did.’
“‘I knew that was a bad word.’”
His uncle, Trump III writes, had not seen whoever damaged his car. Instead, he “saw the damage, then went straight to the place where people’s minds sometimes go when they face a fresh affront. Across the racial divide.”
The younger Trump also provided some context of the time, intended not to excuse the behavior, but to help explain it:
Of Queens in the 1960s and 70s, Trump III says it was “one of the most diverse places on the planet” but also one of contrast, between Jamaica Estates, the affluent, white neighborhood where the Trumps lived, and areas where majority people of color lived.
“If something bad happened” to residents of Jamaica Estates, Trump III writes, “they were the ones who did it. Almost certainly, it was them.”
He considers a key question: “So, was Donald a racist?”
Noting that “people have been asking for decades,” Trump III say his uncle used the N-word at a time when he says “people said all kinds of crude, thoughtless, prejudiced things,” adding: “Maybe everyone in Queens was a racist then.”
Fred C. Trump III is the brother of Mary Trump, who has stated that she heard the ex-president utter racial epithets on several occasions.
