5 of the most shocking claims in Mary Trump's scathing tell-all book about the president

• A series of excerpts from Mary Trump's coming tell-all book have been published, painting a damning picture of President Donald Trump from within his own family.
• In a copy of the book obtained by Insider, the president's niece pulls no punches in assessing her uncle, who she says was "destroyed" by his domineering father, Fred Trump Sr.
• "That's what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends — ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance," she writes.
• The book says Trump cheated on his SAT to get into the prestigious Wharton School of Business at Pennsylvania University, and it quotes Trump's own sister calling him "a clown" after he announced his presidential bid.

President Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump details a host of new claims about the Trump family in her new book, highlights from which were published Tuesday by a number of news outlets.

Mary, whose father, Fred Trump Jr., was Donald's older brother, writes in "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" that her uncle practices bullying and cheats "as a way of life."

"Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can't let him destroy my country," Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, writes.

The book, published by Simon & Schuster, is set to released July 14, two weeks earlier than originally scheduled.

The president's younger brother Robert Trump has sued to block the release of the book, citing a nondisclosure agreement Mary Trump signed in 2001 as the family determined Fred Trump Sr.'s estate.

But a federal appeals court ruled that Simon & Schuster is not bound by that agreement and allowed to book to move forward for release.

The White House responded to the book by claiming that Mary Trump wrote it to make a profit, rather than for the public interest, and denied her claims that the president's father, Fred Trump, was emotionally abusive.

"President Trump has been in office for over three years working on behalf of the American people – why speak out now?" White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews told Business Insider in an email. "The President describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said his father was very good to him. He said his father was loving and not at all hard on him as a child."

Trump cheated on his SAT to get into Wharton, book says

Mary Trump's family memoir includes damning accounts of how Trump uses "cheating as a way of life," she writes, according to initial reporting by The New York Times.

One passage reveals Trump paid someone to take a college-admissions exam, the SAT, on his behalf, and earned him a high score.

Trump later received his bachelor's degree, in 1968, from the esteemed Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which established a policy in August 2019 saying that "providing false information on an application for admission, cheating on an examination, and tampering with records" are qualifying offenses to revoke alumni degrees.

The White House called the claim that Trump cheated on the SAT "absurd" and "completely false" in a statement to Business Insider.

As his oldest brother died, Trump went to the movies, niece says

Mary Trump also alleges that Donald Trump went to see a movie while his older brother, Fred Trump Jr., died of a heart attack caused by alcohol abuse in 1981.

No family members accompanied Fred Trump Jr., known as Freddy, to the hospital the night that he died at the age of 42, Mary Trump writes in her book.

Mary said that Freddy and Donald were both abused by their father, Fred Trump, who favored Donald.

She wrote that her grandfather would tell Freddy "Donald is worth ten of you."

Freddy left the family real-estate business to become a pilot for Trans World Airlines, allowing Donald to ascend in the Trump family business.

'He has no principles. None!'

Donald's sister, Maryanne, told Mary during lunch in 2015 that her brother would never win the Republican presidential nomination, Mary writes.

"He's a clown — this will never happen," Mary says her aunt commented soon after Donald announced his presidential bid.

Maryanne was also astounded by evangelical Christians' support for her brother, according to the new book.

"The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there," Mary writes, quoting her aunt. "It's mind boggling. But that's all about his base. He has no principles. None!"

New York Times leaks

Perhaps the most comprehensive reporting project on Trump's wealth — particularly his longstanding claim to be a self-made business tycoon — came in a bombshell New York Times tax story in October 2018.

Mary Trump was one of the most important sources for that investigation, she says in the book.

Mary writes that she leaked family tax documents to help The Times investigate Trump's wealth. Axios first reported on Mary Trump's participation with the investigation.

The Times investigation revealed that the president wasn't a self-made man but had his father bolster his failing businesses in the 1990s with injections of more than $400 million, in 2020 dollars.

Trump's dad 'destroyed' him: 'That's what sociopaths do'

Mary Trump describes Donald's personality as being the product of childhood trauma, stemming from how Fred Sr. treated his kids.

"By limiting Donald's access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son's perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it," one passage of the book reads, according to The Washington Post.

The pressure Fred Sr. put on Freddy and Donald in the family business incentivized lying from the beginning, according to the book.

For Freddy, "lying was defensive — not simply a way to circumvent his father's disapproval or to avoid punishment, as it was for the others, but a way to survive."

Yet for Donald, in Mary's telling, "lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was."

The book also traces the origins of one of Trump's favorite descriptors.

"Fred [Sr.] hated it when his oldest son screwed up or failed to intuit what was required of him, but he hated it even more when, after being taken to task, Freddy apologized. 'Sorry, Dad,'" Mary writes, adding that Fred Sr. would "mock" Freddy for apologizing.

"Fred wanted his oldest son to be a 'killer.'"

Mary describes this incentive structure in the Trump household as having "destroyed" Donald Trump, with Fred Sr. leaving no room for emotions or vulnerability.

"That's what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends — ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance."