Donald Trump once said that people with severe disabilities were better off dead, according to his nephew’s forthcoming memoir.
In an excerpt from All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way that was published in Time Wednesday, Fred C. Trump III detailed two disgraceful comments made by the former president, one of which was about Fred’s own son William, who was born with a KCNQ2 mutation. As a result, William suffered from infantile spasms, a seizure disorder that affected his physical and cognitive development.
In May 2020, Fred attended 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. At first, things were going well.
“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 wrote that he hadn’t known how to respond to the former president’s comment, so he quickly left.
But Trump’s callous, inhuman attitude toward Americans with disabilities did not end there. Fred 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.’”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Donald say that. It wasn’t far off from what he’d said that day in the Oval Office after our meeting with the advocates. Only that time, it was other people’s children who should die. This time, it was my son,” Fred wrote.
This time, Fred hit back, he wrote. “‘No, Donald,’ I said. ‘He does recognize me.’”
Some online have compared Trump’s despicable comments to Hitler, who began systematically exterminating children with physical and mental disabilities.
In his new book, Fred also claimed that his uncle repeatedly used the n-word during a racist tirade over some damage to his Cadillac convertible.
