MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday asked Mary Trump what she thinks when she hears her uncle, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling people “crooked, mentally impaired, lying, stupid” as he has done to Democratic rival Kamala Harris in recent days.
“It’s like he’s looking at a mirror every time he opens his mouth now,” the former president’s niece, a clinical psychologist who has become a fierce critic of her relative, replied.
“We’ve long known that Donald uses very frequently a defense mechanism known as projection in which he takes things that he unconsciously knows about himself but can’t bear and projects them onto other people,” explained Mary Trump, whose new book “Who Could Every Love You” in part details the impact of her uncle’s upbringing on his present-day character.
It’s “been happening with increasing frequency” since President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign and Harris became the Democratic nominee, she noted.
That switch “really, really made” Trump “unravel in a way we haven’t seen before,” she added. So, clearly, it’s not that she’s getting under his skin because he couldn’t figure out how to adjust to a new strategy and a new opponent, it’s because she pushes his buttons in a way very few people ever have.”
Watch the interview here: