How Donald Trump's brutal childhood jabs shattered brother Freddy's confidence and fueled his tragic downfall at 42

Donald Trump’s childhood insults to his older brother shredded his confidence and set him down a path which led to his untimely death at 42 after a lifetime of drinking, a new book from the former President’s niece claims.

Mary Trump writes that her father Freddy - Donald’s brother - was left feeling ‘deep shame’ at failing to live up to his family’s expectations.

She claims Donald used to mock Freddy, who quit the family real estate business for a career as a pilot, and that their father was ‘embarrassed’ by him.

In ‘Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir,’ Mary writes that Donald told her father he was a ‘glorified bus driver’ in one of many attacks that drove Freddy to alcohol abuse that caused his death in 1981.

The Republican presidential candidate is depicted in the upcoming book as a ‘failure’ and a ‘thin-skinned bully’ who beat up smaller children when he was a boy.

Mary is also unsparing in her criticism of her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr.,  who founded the Trump Organization, calling him a ‘sociopath’ who was ‘incapable of loving anybody.’

Fred would insult Freddy too and tell him he was a ‘goddamn chauffeur in the sky.’

The book is Mary’s second about her family after her bestselling 2020 memoir ‘Too Much and Never Enough’ in which she claimed Donald was the victim of ‘child abuse’ at the hands of his neglectful father.

As the eldest Trump son, Freddy was supposed to be Fred’s successor running the Trump family real estate business.

But he rejected this and ‘to get out from under his father’s stifling control and blanket disapproval,’ Mary writes, he applied to the airline TWA and was accepted into the pilot training it  in 1964.

After graduating, Freddy was assigned to the Boston to Los Angeles route - but four months later.

Mary writes: ‘Although Freddy could fly a 160-ton aircraft and keep all 180 passengers safe, he could not withstand the pressure his father was putting on him to return to Trump Management (the family real estate business).’

According to the book, Fred told Freddy he was a ‘goddamn chauffeur in the sky’.

Donald would tell Freddy: ‘Dad’s embarrassed by you. He tells everybody you’re a glorified bus driver’.

Mary writes: ‘The mockery from his family’ led Freddy to start drinking.

She writes: ‘The deep shame he felt at struggling to hold on to his dream, at failing to live up to his father’s expectations, he couldn’t confide in his wife, leaving him to deal with all of it alone.’

Donald’s ‘widening cruel streak’ and his embrace by his father only made matters worse.

While Freddy was ‘frozen out’ financially, Donald was given as much money as he wanted with perks like a car, credit for work he didn’t do, and a driver.

By 1970, 24-year-old Donald was president of the Trump business, meaning Freddy had no chance of rising up in the company - not that he cared anymore.

‘There was literally nothing Freddy could do to change his father’s feelings towards him,’ Mary writes.

Mary says that the ‘trouble with Donald’ began when he was a boy and he ‘tormented’ his little brother, Robert, and had ‘nothing but disdain for everybody else.’

That was especially the case with his mother, Mary claims.

Children in their neighborhood in Queens, New York, saw Donald as a ‘thin-skinned bully’ who beat up younger kids but ran home in a rage if anyone stood up to him.

Mary, who now works as a therapist, writes: ‘Nobody liked Donald when he was growing up, not even his parents.

‘As he got older, those personality traits hardened and the hostile indifference and aggressive disrespect he’d developed as a toddler to help withstand the neglect from his mother, because she was seriously ill and psychologically unstable, and from his father because, as a sociopath, he had not interest in his children outside of Freddy.

‘Even so the interest wasn’t love - Fred (Sr) was incapable of loving anybody’.

According to Mary, both her father and Donald were ‘failures’ but for different reasons.

Donald failed because he ‘had none of the requisite skills to succeed on his own,’ Mary writes.

Everything Freddy did was a ‘personal affront’ to Fred and so his eldest son ‘repelled him.’

Not that Fred really cared about Donald.

He ‘cared about Donald only to the extent that he could use him,’ Mary writes.

She writes: ‘He needed somebody with Donald’s unselfconscious swagger, lack of self-reflection, and brazen ignorance of his inadequacies to be his avatar of success in a world beyond the unglamorous and provincial precincts of Brooklyn and Queens. Donald played his role to perfection’.

Mary says that the Trump family is so fond of litigation that lawsuits are its ‘love language.’

That extended to her when Donald sued her for $100 million for helping New York Times journalists publish information about his personal finances including his taxes.

The lawsuit claimed that it was an ‘insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works.’

In May an appeal court in New York ruled the case could go ahead.

Among the other legal battles that split the Trump family was the lawsuit filed in 2000 at a court in New York when Mary and her brother Fred III challenged an attempt to cut them out of the family inheritance by Donald and his siblings.

In retaliation, Fred III was informed that the Trump health insurance would be terminated for him and his family.

That included coverage for his baby son William, who needed round-the-clock care costing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year due to severe disabilities.

In his own memoir, which came out last month, Fred III called Donald ‘evil’ for instigating the scheme and said that Fred was mentally impaired when he signed off on it.

Mary did have a reunion of sorts with her family in April 2017 when she accepted an invitation to visit Donald in the White House when he was President.

But she regretted it from the moment she accepted, she writes, adding that combined with the Trump administration policies she had to go into ketamine therapy.

Mary also underwent EMDR therapy, which involves moving your eyelids in a particular way to heal trauma and was made popular by Prince Harry, who did it for his Apple TV show.