As geopolitical relations heat up, Mary Trump has taken to her Substack account to tell her subscribers something she says she has always known about her uncle, Donald Trump: he does not like being a “loser.” According to Mary, even though her uncle throws that word around freely, his biggest fear is that one day someone might truly see him that way — and that he would not be able to handle the humiliation of that perception.
The Trump family has long been a pet interest in the US. As Trump’s need to fraternize with and appeal to the wealthy at the expense of almost everything else has become predictable, some people have shifted their focus to how he grew to be this way. Trump occasionally shares small anecdotes about his past, but for most people, he is an unreliable narrator. They would rather hear what his ex-wife thought about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than Trump dismissing it as yet another “Democrat hoax.”
Trump and his niece Mary have never seen eye-to-eye. When he ran for reelection in the 2020 election, Mary emerged as one of his most vocal detractors. Her tell-all book, Too Much and Never Enough, revealed that she had provided The New York Times with confidential Trump tax records. In the book, she also alleges that Trump neglected her father due to his alcoholism, which ultimately contributed to his early death. Trump responded by claiming that nobody in the greater Trump family likes her anyway, saying, “We didn’t have a lot of respect or like for her.”
Now, it’s a new dawn. Mary was successful in convincing many American voters that Trump was not the best candidate, and he lost the 2020 election. A few years later, Trump returned to office and, within a year, was abducting foreign heads of state, antagonizing allies, and threatening to annex European states. In her Substack, Mary says none of this is shocking to her and suggests it has more to do with his fear of his alleged deteriorating health than most people previously thought.
Mary Trump wrote in her Substack, The Good in Us, “The one thing Donald has always feared most is to be seen as a loser and the humiliation that comes with that.” She continued, “Given the perfect storm of his incompetence, increasing decline across several categories (the psychological, the cognitive, and the physical); and the sense that he is losing control — over himself and the narrative — and the desperation that goes along with that, it was perhaps inevitable that humiliation has come to stalk him at every turn.”
The Trump administration has maintained that, despite the sores that continue to form on his hands — with a new one photographed at Davos — he is in the best shape they have ever seen. For now, it remains speculation, because nobody can truly know what his medical reports say. If there is anything Joe Biden showed the world, it’s just how far an administration can go to conceal medical difficulties. But it always catches up.
Mary knows her uncle better than most, and if her assessment is right, it may be time to carefully watch not just Trump himself, but the people surrounding him just as closely. They may be the ones who end up calling the shots.
Published: Jan 23, 2026 11:51 am