Former President Donald Trump‘s estranged niece Mary Trump says that one particular moment in her uncle’s poorly-received debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris caused an irreparable “narcissistic injury.”
During an appearance on MSNBC‘s Deadline: White House on Wednesday, Mary Trump told host Nicolle Wallace that her uncle had suffered a “resounding defeat” in his first and possibly only presidential debate with Harris on Tuesday. A majority of polls and pundits suggested that Harris won the debate.
After Wallace pointed out a debate moment where Harris made Trump seemingly come unglued after taking jabs at his rally crowds supposedly leaving early, the former president’s niece, a psychologist, said that her uncle would “never get over” the injury to his ego.
“That was a narcissistic injury that he will never get over, actually,” Mary Trump said. “He will continue to defend himself against that even if he never says a word about it again. That is how thin-skinned he is, that is how incredibly fragile his ego is.”
“So, that was one of the most gratifying things about Vice President Harris’ brilliant performance last night,” she continued. “She was able to have substantive conversations about the issues while also baiting him so exquisitely.”
Spencer Platt; Johnny Nunez/WireImage
Newsweek reached out for comment to Donald Trump’s office via email on Wednesday night.
During the debate, the ex-president appeared to lose his cool after Harris asked the audience to “attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies” to observe a variety of bizarre remarks from Trump and his supporters leaving the events “early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
“People don’t go to her rallies, there’s no reason to go,” a defensive Trump said in response. “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
Mary Trump predicted during her MSNBC appearance that Donald Trump’s reactions to Harris’ attacks would only “get worse,” suggesting that the former president would be unable to react in any way other than attempting “to dominate from a position of extraordinary weakness.”
The former president’s niece also warned that her uncle and his allies would attempt to “cheat” in November if they thought that Harris was likely to hand him his second consecutive defeat in a presidential election.
“In light of his resounding defeat last night, he knows he might be going down,” Mary Trump said. “And if he feels that that’s the case, he will take all of us down with him, and we need to be vigilant.”
“It means that he and those around him, and his enablers in the Republican Party, will do their best to cheat in this election,” she added. “We’ve already seen it, he’s already pre-rigging it by calling into question results we don’t even have yet.”
Trump’s campaign communications director, Steven Cheung, told Newsweek previously that “Trump Derangement Syndrome is a serious issue and some people like [Mary Trump] need to get checked out.”