On November 9, 2016, while the rest of the world was digesting the news Donald Trump would be the 45th President of the United States, one woman was uniquely qualified to understand the potential ramifications.

Mary Trump, daughter of Trump’s eldest brother, Freddy, grew up with Donald and has gone on to become a clinical psychologist, giving her a singular insight into the mind of her uncle, whom she has since dubbed “the most dangerous man in the world”.

“We knew him so well, it never occurred to us anybody could possibly be fooled by him,” said Mary, on the phone from Massachusetts, ahead of her upcoming speaking tour of Australia. “I think I had been living in a state of total denial. I was absolutely gobsmacked.

“I didn’t realise the extent to which America was willing not just to put up with but to endorse the kinds of racism and misogyny and anti-immigrant hatred etc that Donald represents. Let’s put it this way: it was a really bad morning.”

In her 2020 book, Too Much And Never Enough, she delivers a blistering assessment of Trump, labelling him with several disorders, including narcissistic personality disorder brought on by his brutal, abusive upbringing by his father, Fred.

It wasn’t always the case, though.

“We all thought he was an asshole. But he was ours. He was part of the family,” she said of the early days in Queens, New York. “He had this spark, this impulse to be kind but it had been so warped by my grandfather and practically beaten out of him that he didn’t know how to do it properly. I would say that’s gone.”

However, that damning assessment is presumably not shared by the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in the 2020 election. How did he get so close to re-election?