>> the president of the united states to take us off the air tonight. that is our thursday broadcast. we thank you so very much as always for being here with us. on behalf of all of my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night. thanks for being with us here tonight. very happy to have you here. our guest tonight is mary l. trump, the niece of the current president of the united states. when the president's -- what is it -- 54th national security adviser, john bolton, sought earlier this year to publish his book about his time in the trump white house, you may recall there were lots of threats from the white house and from the president personally. there was a concerted legal effort, including an effort by the u.s. department of justice to try to stop john bolton from publishing that book. that's the kind of thing this attorney general, bill barr, is happy to do for this president.

but john bolton's publisher, simon and schuster, they went to the mattresses for him. they fought tooth and nail. they defied the white house bluster and threats. they fought every legal action and they got that thing out. and, you know, simon & schuster has the first amendment on their side, and they were righteously and effectively standing up for the first amendment rights of themselves and their author for sure. to be honest, though, simon & schuster also knew that it was really important that the bolton book hit bookstores because they knew it would sell a ga jillion copies, and it did. the bolton book has been a huge best-seller. something like 800,000 copies in its first week. that was a record for simon & schuster until today, when the same publisher just announced that mary trump's new book about her uncle, the president, her account of her life in the trump

family and what she came to learn about her uncle and what she describes as his manifest unfitness for office, we learned today that her book didn't sell 800,000 copies in its first week like john bolton's did. her book sold nearly 1 million copies in one day. sorry, mr. bolton. mary trump will have your seat now. and congratulations to simon & schuster for what is amounting to a bang-up summer for people saying absolutely horrifying things about what they know about this president from close pr pr proximity to him. we're going to be joined tonight by mary trump, and you should know before she wrote this book, she was not exactly in hiding. this is obviously her debut as an internationally known person, but she has pursued a distinguished academic career including recognition as a literature student at tufts,

which may explain in part why she's a notably good writer, which i think is helping sell this book. she earned her ph.d. in clinical psychology. she's contributed to widely cited books in that field, and she has been in the press in the past as a lower-profile but good standing member of the famous trump family. she was notably in the press before in an instance where something went very, very wrong inside that family, and you should know this for context. this is -- i'm going to quote this to you from an article in "the new york daily news" from december of 2000. quote, on june 20th, 1999, fred trump, one of the last of new york city's major post-war builders died in a queens hospital at age 93 after suffering from alzheimer's disease for several years. fred iii, a 38-year-old real estate broker, told the 650 mourners at marble collegiate church that his grandfather was

a generous man who has always shown an underlying responsibility to those in need. fred iii was glad he had been invited to speak. it was an acknowledgement, he said, to his dead father's memory and to the fact that no matter what, he and his sister were family. while fred delivered his eulogy, his wife lisa sat in one of the front pews, pregnant with their third child. that night after returning to their home in greenwich, connecticut, lisa went into labor. all seemed well at first, but 48 hours after baby william trump was born, he turned blue in his mother's arms. his body stiffening and then shaking uncontrollably. it was the first of many devastating seizures to come. what followed for the next harrowing six weeks of his life were brain scans, spinal taps, blood tests, and heart-wrenching visits to three different hospitals, including yale medical center. doctors eventually diagnosed young william with infantile spasms, a rare disorder that can lead to cerebral palsy or autism and a lifetime of care.

quote, we just don't know what william's future holds and what he'll be able to do in his life, said lisa, a full-time mom. during the baby's three-week stay at mt. sinai, robert trump called to assure his nephew that whatever the child needed would be covered by precise, the trump company medical plan. around the clock nurses, emergency room visits when william stopped breathing twice in the first eight months of his fragile life. we were so relieved when robert called, fred iii remembered. robert's call to fred and lisa was followed by a july 19th letter from a trump company lawyer to the family insurance broker which read, quote, please instruct precise -- again, the trump company medical plan -- to pay 100% of all costs relating to baby william's care, notwithstanding any plan limits, percentage, number of visits or maximum dollar amount and whether or not they are deemed by precise to be medically necessary. so the baby was born in june

1999. the day of fred trump sr.'s funeral, lisa trump goes into labor. baby william trump is born june '99. the family as of june and july 1999 was explicitly and in writing promising to pay through the family business health plan 100% of all of the health care needs for this little boy and their family. in the meantime, though, there was the matter of grandfather trump's will. remember he had passed away in june '99 and there ended up being a dispute in the family as to whether or not all five of his kids, including the descendants of his eldest son freddy, who had died -- there was a dispute as to whether or not all five of fred trump's kids would receive equal shares of the grandfather's will or would only the surviving four kids split the estate. well, donald trump, the current president, was one of the

surviving four kids, and from what you know about him, you can imagine how he felt about that dispute, right? if you cut out the descendants of his deceased elder brother, freddy, well, donald's share of the inheritance would be that much larger. it would only be split four ways instead of five. as that dispute percolated in the family, donald trump and his surviving siblings decided to pull the one nastiest little lever that he had had over their deceased brother's kids. they explicitly moved to cut off the medical coverage for the little baby boy with the seizure disorder. quote, on march 30th, fred iii received a certified letter informing him that the medical benefits that had always been provided to his family by the trump organization would end. lisa trump, fred iii's wife, said, quote, i burst out into tears. fred says, quote, i just think it was wrong. these are not warm and fuzzy people. they never even came to see

william in the hospital. our family puts the fun in dysfunctional. and then there's donald trump. asked in an interview with the daily news whether he thought cutting this health coverage could appear coldhearted given the baby's medical condition, donald told "the new york daily news" that he made no apologies. he said, quote, i can't help that. and george washington couldn't lie about whether or not he cut down the cherry tree. jfk had pt 109. eisenhau eisenhower saved the free world from the nazis. all presidents have back stories, what they do to get them to the white house. it's part of their lore. it's why the country chooses them to lead. for donald trump, there is that time he cut off health insurance to his baby boy nephew with the severe seizure disorder as a hardball legal tactic against his relatives so he could get his share of their money. i cannot tell a lie, says george washington about the cherry tree. i can't help that, says donald

trump about denying lifesaving care to a baby so he can inherit his relative's share of his dad's money in addition to the millions of dollars he was already getting from his dad's estate. so that makes news in 2000, and mary trump surfaces in that story. at the time she's a grad student, and she's trying to be supportive of her brother and her brother's sick little boy. and she tells the daily news for that story, quote, my aunt and uncle should be ashamed of themselves. quote, i'm sure they are not. when mary trump's uncle donald would go on to be elected president in 2016, mary trump responded online to "new york times" columnist charles blow. charles blow was writing online about his dismay with the election results that night. mary trump responded, quote, worst night of my life. that same night, legal analyst lisa bloom wrote on twitter,

quote, dear world, i'm so embarrassed for my country. please do not judge us too harshly for this. mary trump wrote online in response, quote, we should be judged harshly. i just hope we do the work to right this horrific wrong. i grieve for our country. bloom then wrote, quote, we are not moving to canada. we are staying and fighting like hill for our values and our country, in the courts, in the streets. and mary trump wrote back to her one word, one number really. mary trump wrote back to her online that night, quote, 2020, period. well, now it's 2020, and mary trump's new book about her family and specifically about her uncle sold a million copies on the first day of its release this week. and the white house did everything it could to try to stop this book from coming out too. you know, threatening and talking all sorts of smack.

the president's younger brother, mary trump's uncle robert, miraculously sprouted the same anti-first amendment lawyer that the president has repeatedly used to try to stop people from publishing things about him that he doesn't like. they sued mary trump to try to stop the book. and, you know, the past financial disputes within the family on which ms. trump and the president have definitely been on opposing sides, you know, that certainly tells you, yeah, you know, wow, there's probably some personal family bitterness there. so you can sort of take that as your grain of salt when you read very unflattering things that she has to say about him. but, you know, those financial disputes themselves, she's not hiding them, and they're not just psychological context in terms of understanding what she has written here. those financial disputes are also material to this as news because part of the story that mary trump has to tell is about the president cheating financially, including trying to

cheat members of his own family. those disputes ultimately lead to mary trump having reams of trump family financial documents, which turns out contained evidence of decades-long schemes carried out by the president and his family to not just evade taxes but to commit serious financial fraud, including some types of financial fraud that may have affected tenants in new york city in a way that continues even to this day. those alleged fraudulent schemes and tax evasion schemes were laid out from those documents that mary trump provided and explained ultimately in a gonzo, huge "new york times" investigation that produced a pulitzer prize for the reporters who wrote it and that created legal concerns for the president that remain today as both congressional investigators and new york prosecutors have just been cleared by the united states supreme court to pursue financial records and tax

records for both the president himself and his businesses. just today new york prosecutors and the president's lawyers were in court arguing about how quickly a subpoena for his financial records can now be served now that the supreme court says he can't evade that subpoena just because he's president. i should say the prosecutors were making the case to that judge today for how quickly they'd like to get those records from the president. the president's lawyers were arguing to the judge how much more slowly they'd like the judge to go, please, because tick tock, the election's in november. but also tick tock, mary trump's book about her lifelong knowledge about the conduct and scams of the president, well, that book is out now, and it has sold a million copies. and there's a weeks-long waiting list, right now, to get a physical copy of this book at some major booksellers. that said, you have an advantage because you are here, and mary trump joins us here tonight to talk about it. joining us now is mary l. trump.

she is the niece of president donald trump. she's the author of the new book called "too much and never enough: how my family created the world's most dangerous man." ms. trump, thank you so, so much for being here. we have been through the wars together technically in terms of trying to get this interview on the air. thanks so much for sticking with us, and thank you for being here. >> it's an honor, rachel. i really appreciate your having me. >> first let me ask you in terms of the introduction that i did there and the way that i set this up if i'm looking at any of that the wrong way or if i've been misconstruing anything that you were trying to do in terms of the way you approached the book. i want to make sure i'm explaining things in terms you're comfortable with. >> yeah, it was both accurate and devastating. >> how are you doing since the book has landed? i mean i imagine you knew that this was going to make a splash, but i can't imagine that you thought it was going to make

this big a splash both in terms of the number of books sold but also the attention, the national attention that this has brought to you. is this how you thought it would go? >> not even close. it's been extraordinarily gratifying, i have to say. it's been a long time coming, and it hasn't always been an easy road, so i'm really happy way beyond my expectations. >> have you heard from anybody in your family or in the white house or the trump organization or anybody since the book came out or since people knew what was in the book, or has it just been basically the legal fight to try to stop you from publishing, and other than that, you've been on your own? >> yeah, it's just been the legal fight. and i think that's -- that's final with me. that's appropriate. >> i found myself thinking in

speed reading the book the first day that i got it and then rereading it when i found out i was going to get a chance to talk to you, i found myself thinking about your, like, acute cognizance of whether it's a useful thing for you to do this. you obviously on election night were despondent that your uncle had won the presidency, and we learned through the book about the deep, dark sort of secrets of your family in terms of why you feel like he is so inappropriate, so unsuited for the job. but you also seemed to be sort of resigned to the idea that nothing you say might change anybody's view about him, that you didn't release the book before the 2016 election because you didn't think it would make a difference or change anybody's mind. how did you -- how did your state of mind about that question change between 2016 and now that you felt like it was worth taking it on now, it was

worth putting yourself out there? >> yeah, that's a great question. there's been quite an evolution, and i think we need to start with the fact that the concept of learned helplessness is something that runs very deep in my family, and i think there are examples in the book that point to that. so in 2016, literally all i would have had was my own experience and my own voice, and there was no reason for me to believe that either one of those would have mattered. i thought about it, but first of all in the context of all the other things that were going on, that donald was getting away with from his attacks on a gold star family, the khans, and serge cove lessky, and a reporter at "the new york times," of course culminating in the "access hollywood" tape, you

just didn't think anybody would take me seriously. i had a lot of reasons to believe that i would be dismissed as a disgruntled, disinherited niece who had been out of the family to all intents and purposes for almost 20 years. and part of it too was thinking that donald was the problem, right? and of course after the inauguration, he would be surrounded by more competent people who understood how government worked, and they would protect him and us from his worst impulses. clearly i was wrong to make that assumption. so it wasn't just the speed with which he started upending norms, which he had started doing during the campaign. it was the number of people who lined up to help him in that endeavor, which has only grown

longer and more egregious as time's gone on. i can't say that there was a last straw because there have been so many straws, but certainly the horrors at the border, you know, the separating of children from their parents, the torture, the kidnapping, and the incarceration of them in cages was unthinkable, unbearable. and when an opportunity presented itself to me to do something, i needed to take a leap. >> our guest tonight is mary trump. her new book is called "too much and never enough." we'll be right back with more. . when you walk into an amazon fulfillment center, it's like walking into the chocolate factory and you won a golden ticket. all of these are face masks.

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you write in a very dramatic section of the book towards the end about the leap that you took when you decided that you would

provide the financial documents that you had to "the new york times." there's this great moment where you described the reporter, susanne craig, from "the new york times" turning up on your doorstep to ask for your help with this thing they are working on in terms of trump family finances. and you say to her that it is, quote, so not cool that you are showing up at my house. and you send her away, but you do let her leave her card with you. and i asked susanne craig about that, and she was very professional and really wouldn't talk about her side of that at all other than to confirm that everything you were saying was true. >> right. >> but that seems to me like that was maybe a pivot point for you too. you initially did not have any interest in talking to her, but something happened with you alone where you decided, you know what? maybe those documents can help, and they should get out there. and without even really knowing what was in them, you decided to hand them over. what was that process like?

>> first of all, the crucial difference was that susanne craig, extraordinary investigative reporter, was finally giving me something concrete that i could do. i had totally forgotten about those documents, and there was no reason for me to think they mattered. they hadn't mattered when i needed them 20 years ago. why would they matter now? and after i asked her to leave but took her card anyway in an interesting bit of unconscious wishful moment, i guess, she persisted. she wrote me a few letters. she called a couple of times. and i thought about it. you know, i still wasn't necessarily going to do anything because it wasn't even clear to them what would be in these

documents quite honestly. and i didn't feel yet able to. it would have been taking a big risk, not that i necessarily felt that, but it was so amorphous still for me. and then i fractured my fifth metatarsal badly and wound up on my couch for a few months. so i watched far too much tv than was good for me and was on twitter far too much as well, and watching in real time what was happening to this country. the destruction of institutional norms, the perversion of our institutions that were designed to protect us, the failure of the other branches of government was really weighing on me. so finally one night i remembered all of the things sue had been telling me, and i

decided to trust her. and i called her. we had a long conversation, and within a week i was on my way, on my crutches, to the office of the lawyer who had represented me all those years ago. and it's a much longer story than i'll tell now, but a few weeks later, i left with 19 boxes full of what turned out to be quite explosive documents. >> and they were explosive in ways that you didn't necessarily understand when you decided to hand them over. i mean part "the times" reporting and part of the reason their piece was 14,000 words and it went on to win the pulitzer prize is that they were able to tease out from essentially an oh dine-looking records, this incredible story of alleged fraud and criminal tax evasion. and, again, there are some trailing ends of that right now in terms of the president's potential legal liability.

but by the time "the times" story came out, did you know what they had? did you know that sort of the explosiveness of the alleged misdeeds that they were going to uncover thanks to what you gave them? >> i had no idea. it was extraordinary. i mean the brilliance of that reporting, the analyses they did, and the story cannot be overstated. they were an oh dine documents, but they were also incredibly complex, and the financial devices that my family used to cover up certain things they were doing were not easily decipherable. so i was utterly blown away as, you know, just objectively by the story but also personally to

find out just exactly what had happened in the family that i didn't understand at the time and also considering it wasn't just, you know, people in my family did these things that they shouldn't have done, but these were my aunts and uncles who also happened to be my trustees, and clearly i didn't benefit from the role that they were supposed to play in protecting my financial interests when i was younger. >> the consequences of that reporting and of what was uncovered thanks to those documents that you had access to and handed over and that those reporters analyzed, still i'm not sure we totally understand what the ultimate implication of that is going to be. obviously there's statute of limitations questions for a lot of that alleges behavior in terms of whether or not it could ever be criminally charged, but it does seem to have cost your aunt, mary anne trump barry her

lifetime job on the federal bench. she resigned ahead of an inquiry that would have looked into her role in those financial schemes. it also is potentially linked to both a congressional investigation and the new york prosecutor's subpoenas that have now been green-lit by the supreme court in terms of the president's finances and trump organization finances being handed over. going through what you've been through, learning what you've learned, knowing what your family has done, do you have any expectations in terms of what prosecutors or congressional investigators might find if they got complete -- the kinds of access that they want to the financial records that your uncle is trying to keep hidden? >> i have no particular insight into that. you know, nobody's spoken to me about it. essentially my role ended when i handed over the 40,000 pages of documents. but if "the times" story is

anything to go by, i think there's a lot more to uncover, and clearly now that the supreme cold front made in my opinion the correct ruling, there will be many more documents to come. >> let me ask you, mary, about something you said in an interview with "the washington post" this week. you talked with ashley parker at "the washington post." >> mm-hmm. >> and you said there was -- she's quoted you saying there was knee-jerk anti-semitism, knee-jerk racism in your family. "the post" quotes you as saying growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the n-word or use anti-semitic expressions. i just wanted you to expand on that. do you mean just generally within the family that was an accepted thing, or do you mean specifically you heard your uncle donald use that kind of language? >> just generally with the oldeolder generations as if it were perfectly commonplace and ordinary to say such things. i had the benefit of living in

jamaica, not jamaica states, and going to school in forest hills, so i didn't share their ideas about race and judaism at all. but, you know, when you grow up with that being perfectly normal, then you don't really think twice about it. >> i have to press you on it a little bit just to ask if the president -- if your uncle was an exception to that in your family or if he -- if you ever heard him express -- either use anti-semitic slurs or the n-word or other racist slurs or other sentiments like that. do you mean this was an ambient thing in your family but you can't say that you ever heard it from him, or did you hear it from him too? >> oh, yeah, of course i did. and i don't think that should surprise anybody given how

virulently racist he is today. >> have you heard -- have you heard the president use the n-word? >> yeah. >> and anti-semitic slurs specifically? >> yes. >> mary trump's new book "too much and never enough" is about her uncle, the president, and her upbringing in the trump family. we will be right back with more. y is so pretty isn't it? wow. jim could you pop the hood for us? there she is. -turbocharged, right? yes it is. jim, could you uh kick the tires? oh yes. can you change the color inside the car? oh sure. how about blue? that's more cyan but. jump in the back seat, jim. act like my kids. how much longer? -exactly how they sound. it's got massaging seats too, right? oh yeahhhhh. -oh yeahhhhh. visit the mercedes-benz summer event or shop online at participating dealers. get 0% apr financing up to 36 months on select new and certified pre-owned models.

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i thought was the single weirdest thing in the book, which other reviewers and people who have read it and talked about it have not singled out. but this strikes me as so weird i literally woke up in the night thinking about it. >> i'm sorry. >> it's -- no, it's all right. i wake up a lot anyway. but it's this anecdote where you are being introduced to not the

president but donald trump, your uncle at the time, is introducing you to melania, who would go on to become the first lady. it's on page 163. he introduces you to mrs. trump, and then he immediately tells melania in front of you that you had a terrible drug problem that you have overcome, which is not true, and you correct him in the moment and say i've never done drugs in my life. then you say this. you say, he slid me a look and smiled. he was embellishing the story for effect, and he knew that i knew it. she was a total disaster, he said, smiling more broadly. so the reason this sticks with me is not just because he told a weird lie about you doing drugs when you didn't do drugs, but that he voiced that lie in front of you when he knew that it wasn't true and then seemed to sort of take pleasure in you being helpless before him lying about you.

psychologically, that's a very weird portrait about what pleasure a person would get from lying, isn't it? >> yeah. it's also a power play. >> hmm. >> when it fits into his favorite narrative. you know, the comeback is much more impressive if you're coming back from a really awful place in the gutter, like being a drug addict instead of just having a tough time in life, just as with his comeback, you know, it was the bankruptcies and the horrible economy, and he was really down for the count. so, therefore, climbing the summit again was even more impressive although, you know, it's questionable whether that actually happened. so there's that. it's framing the narrative in a way he prefers. it also makes him the savior

because, remember, that story is told in the context of, and then i gave her a job. so he's sort of taking responsibility in part for my reclamation, if you will. but more than that, it really is a power play. the difference between that anecdote and other things i see happening is most of the time people don't correct him, which completely plays into his hand because then he's -- he can do it with impunity. >> in the sort of -- the comeback idea there is because he did at one point engage you to potentially ghostwrite another one of his ghostwritten books, which would be "the art of the comeback." it's also telling and fascinating to me that after you spent time at the trump organization and you were, you

know, provided materials that you were supposed to use to start ghostwriting thissi book, you write in one of the last lines of your chapters, for all that you were allowed to see and all that you were allowed to witness, including sitting in on his supposed business phone calls where he'd just put somebody on speaker without that person knowing that you were listening in, getting all this access, you write that you really at the end of it had absolutely no idea what he did for a living, that it never became clear to you what his actual business work was because it never really seemed like he was doing anything. that's fascinating to me because a lot of people who have taken a look at his finances and his supposed business background, have also come up empty, but they've been looking from a distance. you were looking from up close and just felt like there was no actual real business work ever done by him. >> right. it's also important to remember it's a very small company,

certainly compared to other real estate developers. but the only work i saw being done was by other people in the office. so it was pretty fascinating. first of all, his never being willing to sit for an interview with me, but then just having absolutely no insight into any productive projects that he was engaged in. i didn't see any evidence of it. >> mary trump is our guest tonight. her new book just sold nearly a million copies on its first day. more ahead. stay with us. h us we've always put safety first. ♪ ♪ and we always will. ♪ ♪ for people. ♪ ♪ for the future. ♪ ♪ and there has never been a summer when it's mattered more.

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in terms of the work that he is capable of, you spent some time in the book discussing the president's terrible consequential mismanagement of the coronavirus epidemic, and you spend a few pages kind of marveling at the fact that it

wouldn't have been hard for any president to be kind of a hero here, right? to use the defense production act to produce more supplies and tests and ppe. i mean you just have to listen to the scientific experts and, you know, amplify their message and do what they say. you can activate the gears of government that are supposed to turn during this kind of crisis. but instead he didn't, and you kind of, as i said, marvel at that in the book. but i think the country along with you is kind of stuck on this open question you are asking here about why and how he has bungled this crisis so badly, just now openly musing that it will go away on its own, as if that's the only thing that he's capable of doing. i wonder if you can talk a little bit about why you wrote this part of the book and what you think the answer might be to that question about why the president has made all the wrong decisions around this crisis and done so little work to fix anything. >> i thought it was very important to address this

because, of course, it's ongoing. even at the time i was writing, we were -- i think in new york, we were past the worst of it, but it was clear that the rest of the country was not doing what it needed to do. i want people to understand what a failure of leadership this is, and the reason he's failing at it is because he's incapable of succeeding at it. it would have required taking responsibility, which would, in his mind, have meant admitting a mistake, which in his mind would be admitting weakness, which in my family was essentially punished with the death penalty, symbolically or otherwise. what i think we need to grapple with now is why so many people are continuing to allow this.

the fact that he is dividing us at the expense of people's lives, i mean, what? we're 140,000 americans and counting are dead, and the vast majority of those people did not need to lose their lives if only donald had said, listen to the scientists. wear a mask. stay home. the fact that this is continuing, people are dying every day, there are states in this country that are absolutely out of control. and to curry favor with donald, certain governors are continuing to ignore the science, and more people are getting sick, and more people are going to die. it is utterly insane at this point. we need to wake up, and instead of taking it seriously, instead of standing aside and letting

the experts take over, donald is hawking black beans. it's -- you know, the -- it would be absurd if it weren't so

now. continuing along this path, which is exactly what would happen if donald were to be -- would absolutely i believe be the end of the american experiment. i do not believe there's anything coming back from this. there are too many enablers who are, for whatever reason, continuing to enable him. bill barr has gutted the justice department. mike pompeo has gutted the state department. we are in serious, serious danger here, and unfortunately that is no longer hyperbolic. that's just the way it is. >> do you share the concerns that some people have voiced that if your uncle loses the election, that he might try to not leave the white house, that

he might try to hold on to power through some extra-democratic means, by norsforce? do you think that sort of worry is hyperbolic at this point, or is that the kind of thing you're concerned he might resort to? >> no, i think it's perfectly reasonable to worry about that. but how he responds depends a lot on how -- if he loses, how badly he loses. i think the more resounding joe biden victory, the less likely it is for donald to stick around. he is somebody who needs to be right all the time and needs to be winning all the time, will need desperately to spin away from crushing defeat, and i don't know what form that would take. but that, as far as i'm

concerned, is the only way to not guarantee but at least give us a better possibility that there will be a peaceful transition after the election on november 3rd. >> okay. we're back with mary trump in just a moment. i have one last sort of difficult-to-ask question that i want to ask her. that is straight ahead. sta stay with us. stay with us hey, you! nice smartphone. you should switch it to tracfone wireless to get more control over your wireless plan. they give you unlimited carryover data-- you pay for your data, you keep really?

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mary, i have just one last question for you, and again i want to thank you for spending this much time here and talking with us. i just have to ask given what you're saying about your uncle and what degree you think he'd be willing to go to in order to get what he wants and what you've done in terms of handing over documents to reporters and what you've said in the book and what you've laid out here, i find myself worrying about you and wondering if you are scared, if you feel like you have put yourself in personal danger by

doing what you've done and talking the way that you have and saying the things that you've said that the president obviously doesn't want out there in the world. it's different than some critic who has no relation to him criticizing him in harsh terms. what you're doing is something that is different and comes from a place that's very close to him. i wonder if you feel safe. >> i'm not scared. i'm taking appropriate precautions certainly because i am not deluded about potential scenarios. he is in a position of great power. i know my family to be quite vindictive, and donald has a rather passionate following. but all of that aside, i -- i needed to do this. i felt it was my responsibility. i felt it was my obligation, and whatever the consequences are,

i'm prepared to deal with them as best i can. >> mary l. trump. the book is called "too much and never enough: how my family created the world's most dangerous man." it is breaking records in terms of books sold on its first day, and it is changing the world as we speak. mary trump, thank you so much for writing the book but also especially for being here to help us understand it. come back anytime you want to. love to have you back. >> thank you so much, rachel. >> i need to tell you we did ask the white house tonight for a response to mary trump's claims that she has heard the president use anti-semitic slurs and racial slurs, including specifically the n-word. the white house gave us this statement in response. they said, quote, this is a book of falsehoods, plain and simple. the president doesn't use those words. to be clear, this claim that mary trump says she's heard the

president use the n-word and other racist slurs and anti-semitic slurs, that claim isn't actually from her book. it's just something she said in this interview. so them denouncing the book doesn't help. but still, we thank the white house for at least giving tonight. i'm now going to have like ten martinis and try to not think about this for a few hours. god bless us all. now it is time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> after rachel's extraordinary interview with mary trump, we will be joined in a discussion of what we just learned from mary trump by joy reid and tony schwartz. tony was the ghost writer of donald trump's first book. we will also be joined by dr. lance dodus, one of the psychiatrists who tributed to a book that diagnoses donald trump virtually identically to march try trump who is a trained clinical psychologist