His author niece says the US is in a ‘horrible place’ because he sees sickness as ‘unacceptable’

Mary Trump, the niece of Donald Trump, has said the United States is in the horrible place were in because members of the family, including the president, see illness as a display of unforgivable weakness, whether it is in themselves or others.
Speaking on NPRs Fresh Air, Mary Trump, who recently published a tell-all book about her family, said: Thats why were in the horrible place were in, because he cannot admit to the weakness of being ill or of other people being ill.
She spoke as the US president was criticised by doctors for unnecessarily exposing his staff and his security detail to coronavirus by performing a drive-by to wave to supporters outside Walter Reed military medical center where he is being treated for the disease.
Mary Trump is suing the president and two of his siblings, alleging that they cheated her out of millions of dollars over several decades while squeezing her out of the family business.
On Sunday, Mary Trump said both the president and his father, Fred Trump, held the view that illness was unacceptable. Which sounds incredibly cruel, but happens to be true, she said.
In this image provided by the White House, President Donald Trump listens during a phone call with vice president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen Mark Milley, on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020, in his conference room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Photograph: Tia Dufour/The White House via AP
Mary Trumps new book about US President Donald Trump. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
She recounted the way this belief affected her grandmother, who had osteoporosis, saying that she would return from the hospital and need care and physical therapy, but that her grandfather, Fred Trump, was unable to tolerate it. You know, hed be in the room with her. And as soon as she started showing that she was in physical pain, he would say everythings great, right. Everythings great. And hed leave the room.
Asked how the reaction to illness was expressed, Mary Trump said that the attitude was driven by the fact that her grandfather was never sick. Ever.
Donald Trump entered the 2020 pandemic already practising many of the measures that epidemiologists have been calling for avoiding ill people, frequent handwashing and use of alcohol gels, and eschewing handshakes.
As far back at 1993, he told radio host Howard Stern that he suffered germ phobia, admitting it could be a psychological problem. A year ago, the presidents mindset was thrust into the open when he was filmed reacting strongly to coughing in the Oval Office. I dont like that. If youre going to cough, please, leave the room, Trump said, shaking his head.
According to Politico, during the 2016 election campaign it was his then-spokeswoman Hope Hicks who possibly transmitted Covid-19 to Trump last week who would be on standby to offer Trump squirts of hand sanitiser.
Fred Trumps adherence to the philosophies of Norman Vincent Peale, an American minister and motivational speaker who was close to the Trump family and officiated at Trumps first marriage, was taken to such an extreme level that it was toxic because it left no room for expressions of what he considered negativity of any kind, you know, sadness, despair, being physically ill, Mary Trump said.
Friedrich Trump, Mary Trumps great grandfather and the presidents grandfather, was killed by Spanish influenza in the 1918 pandemic, something Mary Trump said her uncle seems to have forgotten. Guardian
Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes