Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP
Donald Trump advised his nephew to let his disabled son die and then “move down to Florida”, shocking claims contained in a new book allege.
Fred C Trump III, who is the son of Donald Trump’s late brother Fred Trump Jr, has written a tell-all book set to be published next week which contains some shocking allegations about the man who could soon become president.
Fred’s son William, who was born with a KCNQ2 mutation, suffered from infantile spasms that affected his physical and cognitive development.
In May 2020, Fred was invited to attend a meeting with Trump at the White House alongside several health advocates, as well as Trump’s former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Brett Giroir, the former assistant secretary for health.
“The meeting I had assumed would be a quick handshake hello with Donald had turned into a 45-minute discussion in the Oval Office,” Fred wrote.
“Donald seemed engaged, especially when several people in our group spoke about the heart-wrenching and expensive efforts they’d made to care for their profoundly disabled family members, who were constantly in and out of the hospital and living with complex arrays of challenges.”
After the meeting concluded, however, Trump called his nephew back in to speak with him.
“I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members,” Fred wrote. “But I was wrong.”
He recalled his uncle’s words to him: “‘Those people…’ Donald said, trailing off. ‘The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.’”
Fred also recounted a later interaction with his uncle, where he had called the former president to ask for help buoying the fund that supported his son’s care.
Fred wrote that his uncle didn’t seem convinced. “‘I don’t know,’ he finally said, letting out a sigh. ‘He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’”
In 2020, Fred Trump III’s sister, Mary Trump, published her own tell-all memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
Fred Trump III distanced himself from that book but it included the story of how Donald Trump and his siblings effectively disinherited Fred Trump III and Mary Trump, then cut off funding for William’s care, in his own book, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This, which is due out next week.
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