Nina Burleigh's latest book is Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: Did you learn anything particularly surprising during your research for the book?--Marshal Zeringue
A: The biggest surprise - the biggest printable surprise anyway - was the fact that, in the U.S. Census for 1929, Trump's mother lived as a maid, in the Carnegie mansion, at the bottom of a retinue of 20 servants, footmen, chauffeurs.
This fact, never reported before, is, to me, Trump's "rosebud," the key to his yearning for class and royal pomp, and even Ivanka's reported contention that the Trumps are America's royal family. This all came down from Ma Trump, a poor Scottish fisherman's daughter, gazing in at the life of one of America's richest families.
The second thing was how terrified women in this circle are - and some men.
The third thing is that Trump's infected with a sense of primeval taboo about...[read on]