The Washington Post published an explosive story based on audios supplied by Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne, a retired federal judge.
Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”
Maryanne Trump Barry: ‘I’m talking too freely’
Lamenting “what they’re doing with kids at the border,” she guessed her brother “hasn’t read my immigration opinions” in court cases. In one case, she berated a judge for failing to treat an asylum applicant respectfully.
“What has he read?” Mary Trump asked her aunt.
“No. He doesn’t read,” Barry responded.
In the weeks since Mary Trump’s tell-all book about her uncle has been released, she’s been questioned about the source of some of the information, such as her allegation that Trump paid a friend to take his SATs to enable him to transfer into the University of Pennsylvania. Nowhere in the book does she say that she recorded conversations with her aunt.
In response to a question from The Washington Post about how she knew the president paid someone to take the SATs, Mary Trump revealed that she had surreptitiously taped 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry in 2018 and 2019. She provided The Post with previously unreleased transcripts and audio excerpts, which include exchanges that are not in her book.
Barry has never spoken publicly about disagreements with the president, and her extraordinarily candid comments in the recordings mark the most critical comments known to have been made about him by one of his siblings. No one else in the family except Mary Trump has publicly rebuked the president. The transcripts reveal the depths of discord between the president and his sister, illuminating a rift that began when she asked her brother for a favor in the 1980s, which Trump has frequently used to try to take credit for her success.
At one point Barry said to her niece, “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.” Mary Trump, 55, told The Post recently that her uncle is unfit to be president and she plans to do “everything in my power” to elect Joe Biden. Her father, Fred Trump Jr., died of an alcohol-related illness when she was 16 in 1981. In her book, she says Donald Trump and his father mistreated her father.
The Post sought comment about the tapes from Barry and White House officials on Friday and Saturday and did not receive a response. After this story posted online Saturday night, the White House issued this statement from the president that said in full: “Every day it’s something else, who cares. I miss my brother, and I’ll continue to work hard for the American people. Not everyone agrees, but the results are obvious. Our country will soon be stronger than ever before!”
How is this “explosive”? Trumps character is universally known. The media froths at the mouth whether conservative or liberal. I have zero faith in our media. Ridiculous that WAPO makes a big deal of this. Nothing new here.
It is extraordinarily important a couple months before the election, that these stories get a lot of play. Lives are at stake.
Elections are often decided, in the last days, by specific news stories: Bush Sr. being amazed by the existence of grocery store scanners, the picture of Dukakis in the tank.
Thank you, Diane, for posting this EXTRAORDINARILY IMPORTANT CONFIRMATION of the story about Don the Con’s paying someone to take his SAT. The whole of the man is prefigured in this telling detail.
I suppose it cannot hurt to continue exposing truth. But, to expound…
This information is not confirmation of something that we THINK about this man but just more of the same, more of the same, more of the same …of what we already KNOW. We have all seen him center stage, on a DAILY basis, behave in ways that are contrary to the BASIC precepts of every world religion, contrary to basic morality, contrary to the most elementary of courtesy and civil behavior. As a kindergarten teacher, when a child in my class has this personality profile – consistently defiant, disruptive, unkind, dishonest, deliberately mean-spirited, acts with no concern for consequences or for others, abuses other students verbally or emotionally (taunts and antagonizes, deliberately embarrasses and mocks others), desperate for attention and angry and bitter when others receive praise – I begin an I and RS case (Intervention and referral services) so that I can refer him to the child study team. I am eager to get support for the child so that right out of the gate, at five years old, we can provide the help they need to become functioning individuals in the school community and for the long term, in society.
At this point, we know everything we need to know about who our president is. His term has created devastation in our country on so many levels. Please God, he will lose this election in a landslide and we can begin to pick up the pieces.
It is explosive in part because of one significant point made by Trump’s sister. She said the religious are supposed to help people. She said, Trump lies and is cruel.
When Bishop Dolan, head of the USCCB, praises Trump’s leadership and gives the prayer at the RNC, Americans are awakened to the politicizing for the GOP, by Catholic bishops, the Knights of Columbus
(led by a former legislative aide to Jesse Helms) and, the influential, religious right, National Council on Public Policy (Kellyanne Conway is a member).
80+ % of evangelicals voted for Trump, 60% of white Catholics voted for him. The Catholic and evangelical religious sects are 40% of the U.S. population.
I have been astonished, during the past 3 2/4 years, at the number of racists that the Trump maladministration has brought out of the woodworks and emboldened. I had thought that we had grown far, far beyond where we actually are. I’m heartened by the young people in the streets calling for an end to systemic racism, but Trump’s persistent 33 percent or so of ignorant, immovable supporters shows that we teachers have a big job to do.
Mark Feltskog, a frequent commenter here, runs a website called Mark’s Text Terminal and posts great material for use with struggling leaners (but of great use beyond this group). See his wonderful website, here: https://markstextterminal.com/. I’ve noticed that lately, in addition to his posts about topics like Main Clauses and Document-Based Questioning, he’s been posting study materials on topics like Demagogue and Lunatic Fringe. He understands the job ahead of us.
Even if we are successful and remove Trump and McConnell from office in this coming election, even after the Trump Whiter House is fumigated and the stench removed, a lot of work will remain, and this work will include not only working to send Trump and Miller and other criminals to prison and to ensure that every last Trump enabler is removed from power, but also to educate the next generation so that never again will such a vile, traitorous, cruel, vindictive, vandalous, cretinous, traitorous, racist, sexist, criminal subhuman like Trump get anywhere near the Oval Office.
The right-wingers continually complain that we teachers indoctrinate their kids.
It’s time that we actually started doing some of that–teaching them some doctrines like, you know, democracy, economic equity, equality under the law, and checks and balances in government. And we really, really need to start explicitly teaching students about lack of scientific support for the concept of race.
And before someone attack me for the last comment, let me hasten to add that race is an important cultural phenomenon but questionable biologically. The cultural phenomenon, of course, should be celebrated.
Siddhartha Mukherjee, a hematologist-oncologist, has arguably taken up the mantle of John McPhee and Carl Sagan as the most important writer of scientific issues for laypersons. His book The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is the only book I unconditionally recommend to everyone I know as a MUST read. In his second book, The Gene, he makes a clear case that the concept of race in biologically unquestionable. It is a fiction humans have constructed and has no basis in biology whatsoever.
Thank you, Greg. I will order copies of both.
I feel strongly that the Trump Era proves that we have, as teachers, been too pandering to ignorant parents, too willing to water down our instruction dealing with political science, genetics evolutionary biology, and other key topics for citizens in a 21st century democracy.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1638755770
When the parent called my AP to complain that “Mr. Shepherd is teaching demonology in his classes” because I had had my theater students enact the opening scene of Macbeth, the AP’s instruction to me should have been, “Mr. Shepherd, you need to double down on this.” I think that a lesson on the history of witchcraft hysteria is in order.
A great review, Greg! You have a gift for this, for going to the heart of a book and sharing its key ideas in vivid, compelling prose. I was taken by this line from your source: “genotype + environment + triggers + chance = phenotype.” How I would love to live in a world in which every high-school graduate understood what that sentence means! One still reads, today, in the popular press, the false claim that “intelligence” is 70 or 75 percent hereditary, a claim based on twin studies that did not take into account epigenetic factors (because these weren’t understood)–environmental factors that influence gene expression. The folks doing the twin studies THOUGHT that they were conducting controlled experiments that isolated genetic variables, but they weren’t. So, bad science that is still propagated, that has had a long and ugly afterlife.
Trading recommendations with you, Greg. This is excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Four-Dimensions-Epigenetic-Philosophical-dp-0262525844/dp/0262525844/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
And I am not saying that we haven’t been doing any of this, but clearly, we need to be doing a lot more. We live in a country so backward that 34 percent of Americans don’t believe that humans evolve but think, rather, that they have always existed in their present form.
A thirty percent failure rate in teaching basic science is not acceptable.
I’ve posted this a few times over the years of commenting here, so I figure this is a good place to do it again. It’s a summation of my opinion of my favorite book on science, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:
In this valedictory statement of scientific philosophy, Sagan elevates the idea and relevance of the scientific method in our daily and public lives. It is not something to “believe in,” it is a way of looking at the world with healthy skepticism and pragmatic attention to systematic, verified observation. “Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.” (We don’t “believe in,” for example, climate change; we make decisions to accept the validity about the prevailing scientific research and interpretation of its findings.) Sagan uses examples in history including UFOs, superstitions, dragons and other mythical monsters, and a variety of other topics to explain how science has demonstrated these things do not exist and why we should not live in fear of them. He tackles those who promote anti-science such as fake approaches to treating and “curing” diseases, how to engage in the “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” and how public figures use these things to distort public dialogues about policy.
But the one thing that makes this book so special to me is Sagan’s connection of science to the civic education and engagement that is required of citizens in the modern world, which are essential if we are to be free. I think it worth quoting the final paragraph of this, the last book he wrote in his life, something he wrote when he knew had, at best, a few short months to live. These are quite literally the last public words of the greatest scientific communicator who has ever lived:
“Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don’t have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen—or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. (emphasis added)”
Amen to this. I concur. A great book.
“Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you shall learn nothing.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley
I keep getting asked to contribute to the Trump campaign. OMG. Just think I could have my name broadcast live to the nation for giving money to Trump!!! My name could be the FIRST to be displayed. I’d have to lock myself in my condo and never go out for groceries again.
………………………………………………….
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– President Donald J. Trump
2016 Republican National Convention
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When I accepted the Republican Nomination for President of the United States in 2016, I promised you that I would spend every minute of the next four years putting America FIRST.
Now here we are again, and I can honestly say I have kept that promise to you.
These have been the hardest, but most rewarding four years of my life. We’ve faced more challenges than any other president in our Nation’s history, and despite the Left’s best efforts to BRING US DOWN, I will deliver a historic Presidential Acceptance Speech on August 27th.
In 2016, we had thousands of American Patriots contribute to get on the Official GOP Convention Donor List, where their names were broadcast LIVE during my speech.
This year, I want to go even bigger. I want to have a RECORD-BREAKING 1,000,000 American names displayed for the entire Nation to see. Just think, your name could be the very FIRST name displayed.
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https://tenor.com/view/eyeroll-ugh-judge-judy-rollseyes-gif-5636523
Billionaires who lack conscience fund Trump. Tapping the pockets of the poorest 40% for $42 (those among them who want a racist president) is just cruel….wait ….just remembered Steve Bannon and McSally.
McSally wants her constituents to fast a meal so she can be re-elected and cut billionaire taxes.
Perhaps it’s a sign of how much I’ve already baked in the notion that Trump is a horrific human being in every respect that my first and lasting reaction to this was, wow, what kind of scumbag secretly records 18 hours of conversations with her Aunt.
Ah, a fight over the money.
Mary Trump knew from her education as a psychologist AND her knowledge gained from living in the Trump family that her uncle Donald was a vile person with no integrity and that he was unfit for the office. Now she has proof that other family members who knew him felt the same way.
I applaud her guts to go public. The country needs to know.
FLERP,
You don’t have to quote a third person to “prove” that Mary Trump and her brother Fred III were cheated of their inheritance when Fred Sr. died. She writes about it in her book. She didn’t realize what happened until the New York Tines came calling and asked to see whatever financial records she had. At first she refused to cooperate. But as she watched her uncle acting as a pawn of the Far Right, which she loathed, she went to her lawyer’s office and eventually carted away large quantities of records. The Times analyzed them, wrote a 14,000 word article that won a Pulitzer Prize. At that time, Mary discovered that the family had dramatically lowballed the value of the estate to avoid taxes. They said it was worth $30 million. They used that figure to calculate the inheritance of Mary and her brother. The actual value, according to the Times, was $1 billion. The family got Mary and her brother to agree to their low-ball offer and sign an NDA by threatening to cut off their medical insurance (Fred III has a son with serious medical issues). All of this is in her book. Did you read it?
Have not read her book (do not plan to).
a) “scumbag” and b) “money”: a) When one knows the truth and can’t figure out how to get others to understand and believe it, especially a fundament truth, one resorts to unorthodox means. As an analogy, is a spy who wants to avert war and makes secret recordings to convince policymakers and leaders of the truth a scumbag? b) Who of us, were we to learn that we had been cheated of something of great value for decades would say, oh well, c’est la vie? I find both interpretations listed above to be very cynical.
I can’t deny I’m cynical when it comes politics and book deals and the Trumps. Although I will say that I’ve always had good experiences in front of Judge Barry, and I’ve heard good things about her from her former clerks. A nice, entertaining person and a good judge.
Touché! You stay cynical and I’ll stick with sarcasm and occasional hyperbole. The world needs both every now and then. And like you, haven’t read and don’t plan to. Too many good books in the world I’ll never get to.
I just received this VERY IMPORTANT NEWS! Trump is now saving people’s lives./s The crap never ends and people believe this. Unbelievable!!
……………………….
Natalie did NOT die. And now she is living better than she has in years!
“I’m walking. I am healthy. I am living the quality of life that I always wanted,” Natalie says. “I’m not dying any more thanks to President Trump.”
“I’m not dying any more thanks to President Trump.”
– Natalie H.
She even calls him “my Good Samaritan.”
Matt B., a veteran Navy pilot, was diagnosed five years ago with a fatal form of ALS.
He was confined to a wheelchair, hardly able to speak, and exhausted all treatment options available.
He wanted to keep fighting, but there was NOTHING his doctors could prescribe him to help.
Then came Trump’s “Right to Try” law.
And days later, he received a new treatment, one that was previously restricted by FDA red tape.
#TheyKnew who Trump Really Was All Along. Conservatives in their own words.
Aug 21, 2020
act.tv
All These Conservatives Knew Who Trump Really Was All Along:Lindsey GrahamTed CruzRand PaulMarco RubioNikki Haley Kellyanne Conway Mike Pompeo Glenn Beck Rick Perry Susan Collins
THEY CALLED HIM THESE THINGS… liar, narcissist, race baiting, xenophobic,r eligious bigot, mean spiritedness, con artist, orange faced windbag, kook, unfit for office, AND MORE…
Washington (CNN), 2019:
President Donald Trump’s older sister, federal appellate Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired — ending a judicial investigation into whether she broke judicial conduct rules by committing tax fraud, according to a still-unreleased court filing.
The New York Times first reported Barry’s retirement, saying Barry filed her retirement papers in February, just 10 days after court officials notified complainants that the matter was “receiving the full attention” of a judicial conduct council.
But because Barry retired, the investigation automatically closed.
“In concluding these proceedings, the Judicial Council does not reach the merits of complaints,” the judicial council of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals wrote of Barry’s case in an April 1 document obtained by CNN.
Of course you are innocent until proven guilty, she was never convicted of tax fraud.
Tax fraud or not, her comments about Donald are quite true and spot on. I hope the sun, planets, stars and black holes are all aligned for a resounding defeat of this Stephen Kingesque horror clown.
Bob –
Yes, I suppose it IS important to expose truth. To expound on my point, TRUMP
This information is not confirmation of something that we THINK about this man but just more of the same, more of the same, more of the same …of what we already KNOW. We have all seen him center stage, on a DAILY basis, behave in ways that are contrary to the BASIC precepts of every world religion, contrary to basic morality, contrary to the most elementary of courtesy and civil behavior. As a kindergarten teacher, when a child in my class has this personality profile – consistently defiant, disruptive, unkind, dishonest, deliberately mean-spirited, acts with no concern for consequences or for others, abuses other students verbally or emotionally (taunts and antagonizes, deliberately embarrasses and mocks others), desperate for attention and angry and bitter when others receive praise – I begin an I and RS case (Intervention and referral services) so that I can refer him to the child study team. I am eager to get support for the child so that right out of the gate, at five years old, we can provide the help they need to become functioning individuals in the school community and for the long term, in society.
At this point, we know everything we need to know about who our president is. His term has created devastation in our country on so many levels. Please God, he will lose this election in a landslide and we can begin to pick up the pieces.
“God”?
The religious elected Trump, 80+% of evangelicals and 60% of white Catholics. The two religious sects are 40% of the U.S. population.
Bishop Dolan, head of the USCCB, praised Trump’s leadership, The bishop of St. Paul/Minneapolis denied his priests the American right of voting (in the presidential primary this year). And, his state’s Catholic Conference advised him it was within his purview to do so. Last month, the Knights of Columbus welcomed a Trump photo op at its D.C. shrine to Pope John Paul, after the day prior, Trump protestors were forcibly routed from Episcopalian property.
The U.S. has become a theocracy, replacing its prior democracy.
It is apparent that FEAR is what is keeping many mouths shut when it comes to who the real Donald Trump is.
Trump loves to get revenge.
Trump loves chaos.
Trump is a serial liar.
Trump is a fraud and conman.
Trump has everyone he deals with sign confidentiality agreements and if they dare reveal the truth behind those agreements, he has he lawyers drag them through the courts to bankrupt and/or ruin them even if what they revealed was the truth.
Whenever Trump goes after someone at one of his rallies or attacks them through Twitter, Trump’s victims almost always end up getting death threats from some of Trump’s worst supporters.
I suspect that confidentiality agreements and threats of ruinous legal actions are probably commonplace requirements for employment by the wealthy and powerful.
How many of the wealthy and powerful people who “interacted with” Jeffrey Epstein required confidentiality agreements of anyone who might have seen or heard something that would be embarrassing (or worse).
I suspect that many (if not most) of them did, which is undoubtedly why it has taken so long to get the victims of Epstein and Maxwell to come forward.
But stay tuned. I think the flood gates may be opening.
Maxwell is not going to go quietly.
Principled Liar
Is lying with principle
Better than sans?
If lying’s your principal
Way to get fans?