NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 11: Former U.S. President Donald Trump alongside his son Eric Trump … [+] speaks to the media at one of his properties, 40 Wall Street, following closing arguments at his civil fraud trial on January 11, 2024 in New York City.. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump has been accused of once saying that it may be better for people living with serious disabilities to “just die.” The startling revelation was laid out in a new book authored by Trump’s nephew Fred Trump III the son of the former President’s older brother Fred Trump Jr who passed away in 1981.
In the tell-all memoir entitled All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got this Way which was released on Tuesday Fred Trump recounts a meeting with his uncle and other family members during his presidency in which they discussed disabled people’s healthcare partly based on Fred Trump’s own experiences with his severely disabled son William. William has cerebral palsy and requires round-the-clock care costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Though Fred noted that his uncle appeared “engaged” during the meeting he went on to say that the then President remarked to him after it had finished that “maybe those kinds of people should just die” bearing in mind “the shape they’re in’ and ‘all the expenses.”
The memoir tells the story of what it was like growing up within the gilded Trump family environs in Queens, New York and how they later went on to become an American dynasty. It follows on the heels of Fred Trump’s sister Mary also publishing her own book about the pair’s headline-dominating uncle in 2020 entitled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man which contained a series of scathing attacks on the former President’s character and personality.
Naturally, many Republicans backing Trump to make a dramatic return to the White House this fall will dismiss this latest set of revelations as cynical opportunism and a cash grab that seeks to leverage the febrile atmosphere engulfing U.S. politics at the present moment.
However, when it comes to allegations of disability discrimination, former President Trump does appear to have previous.
As recently as March of this year he was filmed mocking President Joe Biden’s lifelong speech impediment known as a stutter at a rally in Georgia. Trump’s performance at the rally bore an uncanny resemblance to the way in which he ridiculed the New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski during the 2016 campaign who was born with deformities in his hands and arms. Irate at Kovaleski’s attempts to fact-check him Trump later said, “You’ve got to see this guy” whilst curling and twisting his arms to mimic the journalist.
In an article published today in Religion News Service Charles C. Camosy, a professor of medical humanities at the Creighton University School of Medicine and a scholar in Moral Theology at St. Joseph Seminary in New York criticized the anti-disability rhetoric emerging from the Trump campaign and the Republicans at large.
“The mocking attacks on President Biden because of his age and infirmity, quite apart from legitimate questions about whether he can do the most difficult job in the world, were both disgusting and revealing. Listening to a good number of podcasts across the political spectrum, I’ve heard no shortage of conservative political talkers who have made fun of his speech, his walk, even his ability to control his bowels,” Camosy wrote.
He continued, “After Biden’s very poor debate performance against Trump, people such as Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, Clay Travis of OutKick, Sean Davis of The Federalist and Joel Berry of The Babylon Bee among many others, all mocked the president’s supposed dementia.”
Canosy did however state that in his view negative rhetoric concerning disability was a bi-partisan issue citing Bill Maher’s description of Trump as “Dementia Don,” and Biden’s successor as Presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign questioning Trump’s memory. He also referenced some Democrats championing laws permitting physician-assisted suicide.
Sadly, when it comes to diverse groups, the barbs are not simply limited to the disabled.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance’s recently highlighted historical comments stating that the Democrats were a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives” suggesting that such people could never really have a “direct stake” in the future of the country are yet to fully cool off on the news agenda.
Meanwhile, it would not come as a great shock if Trump’s 2020 comments questioning whether then Senator Kamala Harris was an American citizen despite being born in Oakland, California miraculously resurface to sew all the requisite doubt, confusion and hesitation forming the precise purpose for which disinformation is designed.
Zooming out from all the individual and sometimes petty claims and counterclaims there are now broader battle lines being drawn in what could prove to be the most polarizing election of all time and a fight to the bitter end for the heart and soul of America. On the one side, there are those posing themselves as the straight talkers unafraid to echo the opinions that many hard-working Americans hold but are afraid to speak out loud amidst a rising tide of wokism and a DEI agenda that has become overpowered and out of control. On the other side are those who claim to uphold values of compassion and respect for those of all backgrounds and to protect America from what they view as a disturbing slide into a modern form of fascism. How it all ends is tough to call from today’s vantage point and the narrative will undoubtedly be shaped by those yet unknown twists, turns and revelations to come.
