In an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Fred C. Trump III, the nephew of former President Donald Trump, claimed that his uncle had once told him that people with disabilities, including his own son, “should just die.”
The book, titled “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way,” will officially be released on Tuesday, July 30, 2024.
In the passage, Trump’s nephew discloses that William, his son, was identified as having infantile spasms, a rare condition affecting William’s physical and mental development.
His wife and he were motivated by this diagnosis to advocate for increased funding, education, and research to determine the most effective ways to assist those with disabilities.
He claimed that while his uncle was serving in the White House, he got in touch with his cousin Ivanka, who was serving as her father’s advisor at the time, and she assisted him in setting up a meeting with Trump administration officials.
According to Trump’s nephew, he spoke with doctors, health activists, and his uncle in the Oval Office for forty-five minutes about the difficulties they experienced when caring for patients with impairments and their families. The now-Republican nominee asked to speak with him alone after the meeting.
“Those people,” he alleges his uncle said, “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”
“I truly did not know what to say. He was talking about expenses. We were talking about human lives. For Donald, I think it really was about the expenses, even though we were there to talk about efficiencies, smarter investments, and human dignity,” Fred Trump’s grandson writes in his memoir.
The former president was contacted by USA TODAY and TIME magazine, but they did not hear back on his nephew’s account of what happened. The Republican candidate has already faced criticism for remarks he made about people with impairments that were deemed disrespectful on previous occasions.
Trump made fun of New York Times writer Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a medical condition that limits joint mobility, when he was running for president in 2015.
The former president clarified that he was critiquing the reporter’s reporting, not his disability, after drawing criticism for mimicking the reporter’s shaking.
At the time, a news organization spokeswoman expressed shock, saying that it was wrong for Trump to make fun of one of its reporters’ physical looks.
With an emphasis on politics and education, Rachel Barber is a USA TODAY fellow for the 2024 election. Use @rachelbarber_ to follow her on X, formerly Twitter.
See This: Watch Video as Father Of Trump’s Shooter Speaks Out For The First Time
