Mother Jones illustration; Niall Carson/PA Wire/Zuma; Courtesy Fred Trump
Donald Trump’s nephew Fred Trump III doesn’t expect to be invited to his uncle’s inauguration this time around. He did, after all, write a book exposing some of the president-elect’s unsavory behavior, including the Donald telling Fred he should let his disabled son, William, die.
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But Fred Trump still plans to spend time in Washington, DC, in the coming years to push for progress on disability issues. “I joke that there are two things Donald and I share: the love of golf and we’re both relentless,” Fred said. That relentlessness also led him to start an advocacy nonprofit with his wife, Lisa, to fight for improved care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
In an interview with Mother Jones, Fred said his uncle’s increasing use of both the phrase “mentally disabled” and the R-word to describe opponent Kamala Harris in the weeks leading up to the election reflected his harmful views on disability.
Remarking on Harris’ intelligence in response, Fred said, still wasn’t much of a critique of Trump: “It doesn’t matter. You don’t say it to anybody.”
And it’s not just his uncle that Fred is irate about: It’s the reaction of his uncle’s supporters. They laughed again and again at Trump turning disability into a cruel joke, Fred noted, just like they laughed when Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski’s disability in 2015.
Fred believes the Harris-Walz campaign could have pushed much more on disability issues; he witnessed the campaign drop the ball when it came to engaging with disability organizations, he said, and as a fellow father of a young person with a disability, Fred was disheartened that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did not address the issue during his debate with Vice President-elect JD Vance.
“Tim Walz doesn’t even mention the word ‘disability,’” Fred said. “You have a child who has disabilities, who became such a guiding light during the convention, and I was there to witness that.”
But unlike some people opposed to Trump’s presidency, Fred finds questioning the election itself a waste of time. Instead, he urged, people opposed to the new administration should swiftly “get engaged for whatever cause is important to you.”
