The Legendary Mashed Potato Story

Getting under his skin

[Transcript below]

I’ve started doing shorter videos on Youtube. I hope you enjoy this first one about a pivotal moment in Trump family history!

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Back in March of 2017, which honestly feels like it was several millennia ago—in fact, the last two weeks feel like there were several millennia long—I got an invitation to the White House. It wasn't from Donald; it had nothing to do with him. And as you can imagine, in March of 2017, only two months after the inauguration, I was struggling a bit. The election of 2016 was devastating to me as an American, but also to me personally. And things were much worse in March because we had a much clearer sense of what Donald's administration was going to do.

But I had a fairly close if complicated relationship with my Aunt Maryanne, from whom the invitation came. She was turning 80, and my Aunt Elizabeth was turning 75, so they decided to celebrate jointly at the White House. I was asked to go. I didn't want to, but I felt that I should.

It felt wrong. It felt weird. But again, as was often the case in my family, if I didn't do it, I would probably get into some kind of trouble, whatever that meant. But if I did go, it's not like anything good would happen. That was always the conundrum.

I decided to go and I immediately regretted it. It was truly one of the most surreal, unpleasant experiences of my life. But something interesting happened. We were at dinner in the executive dining room, and again, we were there to celebrate my aunts Maryanne and Elizabeth and their birthdays, right? My uncle Rob, who was not a particularly nice person, got up and started toasting Donald; he kept referring to him as “Mr. President,” which was quite embarrassing, especially given the fact that everybody at that table knew that the two of them couldn't stand each other.

Finally, it was Maryanne's turn to make a toast. She thanked everybody for being there, and then towards the end of her brief remarks, she said, “Let’s remember when Freddy [meaning my dad] dumped the bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald's head because he wouldn't stop tormenting Rob.” Everybody in the family, my aunts, uncles, brother, cousins, knew that mashed potato story. We referred to it, in fact as “the legendary mashed potato story.” We all laughed because, on the one hand, it was sort of an homage to my dad who'd been dead since I was 16. And it was a way for Maryanne to get under Donald's skin because Donald hated that story. He did not laugh. In fact, what he crossed his arms and pouted, and he didn't stop pouting until the subject had been changed.

What actually was the mashed potato story? It wasn't just that my dad had dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald's head. It was why he did and the aftermath. My dad and Donald were about seven or eight years apart. My aunt Maryanne was the oldest child, and my dad, the oldest son, was a year and a half younger. Elizabeth came four years after him, then Donald about three and a half years after that. Robert, the youngest, was a year and a half younger than Donald.

So, there was a fair age gap between Maryanne and my dad, on the one hand, and Donald and Robert, the two youngest, on the other. The five of them were in the breakfast room (as we called it) waiting for dinner and my grandmother was in the kitchen getting the meal ready for the five kids, her and my grandfather, and my great-grandmother. Fred’s mother, Elizabeth, lived just a couple of blocks away in one of my grandfather’s buildings, and was there for almost every meal.

As the kids waited, Donald was engaged in one of his favorite activities--tormenting his little brother, Robert, who was about five at the time and was also very frail, very skinny, very pale, and very thin skinned, figuratively, if not literally. Donald was around seven. My dad would've been 13 or so.

By this time, Donald was a pro at teasing and belittling his little brother and, as was often the case, Robert started crying hysterically and screaming for Donald to stop. Donald, of course, wouldn’t and nobody could get him to—especially not my grandmother for whom, even then, Donald had a fair amount of contempt. He didn't listen to a word she said, and even telling him to wait until his father came home had no impact on his behavior,

In the midst of the fighting and yelling and sobbing, my grandmother started setting the table and bringing the food in from the kitchen. As things continued to escalate, my dad, in just a fit of frustration, did the only thing he could think of to do to make Donald stop: He picked up what must have been the quite massive bowl of mashed potatoes that my grandmother had just put on the table and he dumped it on Donald's head. Robert immediately went quiet and Donald was speechless.

And, probably worst of all for him, everybody, except Donald, of course, started laughing. They were laughing their heads off, and Donald knew they were laughing at him. It may have been the first time, at least consciously, that Donald felt that awful feeling of humiliation, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't laugh it off because, even then, he wasn’t capable of laughing at himself. I think it some ways, this is the source of his grievance, the source of his always feeling that everything is against him and life is completely unfair—which sounds absurd because among other things, it’s completely untrue.

The bowl of masked potatoes ended Robert's suffering, at least that night, but it also set Donald’s into motion. It was the source of his terror of being humiliated. And he developed some very strong armor and defense mechanisms so he’d never feel that way again.

We’ve seen how this plays out. It's a big part of why he's cruel to other people—he needs to get there before the other person has a chance. But it’s also his Achilles’ heel. One of my fantasies is that, as we get closer to the election, we actually start counter-programming his rallies and have a massive group of people, equipped with large bowls of mashed potatoes, get inside his venue.

It is so easy to get under this guy's skin, and I really hope that people who are in a position to him start doing it. It doesn't take much, but I have yet to see anybody try. Let's hope that President Biden gets in another debate with Donald and really goes for the jugular, rhetorically speaking. Honestly, it’s as simple as a bowl of mashed potatoes.