In the spirit of the season, Mary Trump took a lighthearted look back on her childhood family Christmas gatherings and reminisced on the peculiar presents she used to receive from Donald Trump and his wife at the time, the late Ivana Trump.
“Christmas with the Trumps was not my favourite time as a child, but it did not lack for entertainment,” she said in a video uploaded Sunday to her YouTube channel, Mary Trump Media.
She said things got “interesting” in 1977 after her uncle had married Ivana, a model, and she joined the festivities.
Mary Trump opened her first present from the couple, “and it was a box of underwear.”
“Yes, it was a three-pack of underwear, retail $12, from Bloomingdale’s,” she said. “It was a very exciting moment, and it just kind of got weirder from there.”
“The next year, I got a shoe,” she continued. “Singular. A shoe.”
It was a gold lamé shoe with a four-inch heel stuffed with hard candy, she recalled.
“It occurred to me at some point that it was probably the door prize or party favour from some luncheon she had attended, and she thought, yeah, why not give it to that kid,” said Mary Trump, who would have been 13 at the time.
That same year, Mary’s brother, Fred Trump III, received a leather-bound journal, she recalled.
“I was actually a little jealous, because it was really nice, right?” she said. “Until we figured out that it wasn’t a journal, it was a calendar-year journal. And it was from two years earlier. So it wasn’t even something that he could use.”
It was then, Mary said, that she and Fred started a competition to see who would receive the “worst present” from the Trumps each Christmas.
The gold shoe was her favourite of all time, she said. The following year, as a 14-year-old, she got what she thinks was a regifted gift basket containing a tin of sardines, crackers and olives. The basket also appeared to be missing an item — which she guesses was the caviar.
Today, getting weird presents from her uncle is no longer on the cards. Mary Trump, a psychologist, has been a vocal critic of Donald for years, publishing several books about the family dynamics that led to his narcissistic personality and authoritarian leadership style.
And she offered a word of advice to gift-givers everywhere.
“If you’re going to buy somebody something that comes in pairs, like shoes or socks, give that person both of them,” she suggested.
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