ABC co-host Meghan McCain challenged Mary Trump over her tell-all book during a Thursday morning interview on “The View.”
Trump’s book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” details a bevy of allegations against her uncle, President Donald Trump. Those allegations include the claim that he paid someone to take his college entrance exam and has used the N-word and anti-semitic slurs.
The White House has denied the claims, pointing to Mary Trump’s financial incentive to publish a book of that nature.
“Look, I think I’ve made it clear to your publishers, I don’t like books like this,” McCain told Trump. “I don’t like family tell-all books, especially when it comes to families with fame and power because I — they’re told from the one side, and often the subjects are villainized to the point that I don’t actually end up believing the stuff written. There have been books about my family which are complete and total garbage, told from a skewed perspective, and at the end of the day you get a really good paycheck out of it, but I don’t think it’s that legitimate. What do you say to people like me, who think this is just a great way for you to get a paycheck right now?”
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“Well, you’re entirely entitled to your opinion,” Trump responded. “I think if you read the book, you see that I bring to the story my very deep experience within the family. I’m not some stranger writing it. I’m his niece.”
McCain then challenged Trump’s claim of closeness with the family, saying many in her own extended family wouldn’t “know the inner workings of my immediate family dynamic in the way that you present it.”
“I am not extended family,” Trump responded. “Donald is my dad’s younger brother, and my cousins, Donald’s children, are completely irrelevant to the story I was telling, which is in my view, the foundational narrative about my family and how Donald became the person he is.”
Trump contended that she would have written the book years ago if she “had wanted to cash in,” saying she took a “risk” by publishing the book now.
“So I would much have preferred not to do this, but I felt it was extremely important that the American people have all of the information they need in order to make an informed decision,” she said. (RELATED: ‘Hannity From Here On Out’: Meghan McCain Predicts Trump Will Stick To ‘Friendly’ Interviews After Chris Wallace)
“But you weren’t concerned enough to not go to the White House and have dinner with him,” McCain said. “I think this is the part I don’t understand. Your brother says it’s bad, and you went to the White House and had dinner with him while he was president on the taxpayer dime. You have a complicated relationship with him in this family that I don’t understand … but I think if you were probably close to that family, you would probably know your cousins Don Jr. and Ivanka on a level that you clearly don’t.”
“I’m not entirely sure why you are so focused on my cousins, who again are so much younger than I am,” Trump responded. “I did not go to the White House on the taxpayer dime. That’s a quite absurd thing to say, but families are extremely complicated. … I was going there for my aunt’s birthday, you know, not to take advantage of Donald’s position. And I think to focus on these things is to take away from the actually important things I write about in the book.”