{"id":444780,"date":"2026-01-31T08:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/444780\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T08:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:23:13","slug":"a-different-kind-of-trump-by-jill-lawrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/444780\/","title":{"rendered":"A Different Kind of Trump – by Jill Lawrence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(Composite \/ Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

IT\u2019S NO SURPRISE THAT DONALD TRUMP\u2019S so-called health care \u201cplan\u201d is a skeletal ten-paragraph document<\/a> (nineteen if you include the fact sheet<\/a>). Or that it is nowhere near<\/a> \u201cgreat,\u201d though that word is part of its official title, capitalized and italicized.<\/p>\n

Fred Trump III, Trump\u2019s nephew, was among the least surprised. \u201cIt\u2019s a joke, of course,\u201d he told me last week on Zoom. \u201cYou need serious people\u201d to get things done on health care, he added, and there aren\u2019t many around.<\/p>\n

To be fair, lawmakers in both parties are on track to maintain<\/a> current levels of science spending and in particular to reject the president\u2019s proposed 40 percent cut<\/a> in biomedical research. But in general, between ideology, budget constraints, and the time it takes to turn a bill into a law, progress is hard to come by\u2014as Fred III and his wife, Lisa, are all too aware.<\/p>\n

Their third child, William, born in June 1999 with a rare genetic seizure disorder caused by a mutation in the KCNQ2<\/a> gene, is nonverbal and uses a wheelchair that he can\u2019t move by himself. Now 26, he lives near his parents in a state-run group home that provides the round-the-clock care he has needed all his life.<\/p>\n

Lisa and Fred have had to be serious about health care and advocacy\u2014for their own child and beyond. They have focused on research, prevention, and treatment, caregiver training and pay, housing options for people with disabilities, and more use of data to shape research and services, as well as helping other parents handle challenges they never anticipated. Their own experiences through the years, with both relatives and politicians, suggest it\u2019s best to keep expectations tempered.<\/p>\n

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Soon after William was born, Fred and Lisa got involved with a stem-cell research organization. They thought at the time that this could be \u201cthe potential miracle cure,\u201d Fred told me. But then, for \u201ctheological reasons,\u201d as Fred put it, President George W. Bush sharply limited<\/a> the research. \u201cThat of course was very damaging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s move, in his view, was similar to what\u2019s happening now. He and Lisa described hearing firsthand about the impact of the Trump administration\u2019s medical research cutbacks\u2014project terminations and brain drains to countries like Canada, Ireland, and China\u2014from scientists and others at a KCNQ2 Cure Alliance conference<\/a> in September.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutting my businessman hat on, I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re thinking,\u201d Fred said of the decisions to pull back on research. People with disabilities \u201care going to be in our lives for as long as they\u2019re going to be in our lives. If they get sick or ill or you don\u2019t take advantage of what\u2019s out there to help them . . . they\u2019re going to need everything that goes with having a severely disabled person in your life. As opposed to spending the money now\u201d to try to head off problems early in their lives.<\/p>\n

In his July 2024 memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got That Way<\/a>, Fred III wrote that he and his fellow disability advocates did find common ground in his uncle\u2019s first term with several top officials and the president himself with an idea for a program \u201cthat would cut through the bureaucracy and control costs and also yield better and more efficient medical outcomes.\u201d Did anything concrete come out of those meetings? \u201cSausage-making in government is a very long process,\u201d he said. \u201cSo to answer your question, no, nothing we were involved in came to fruition.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, Fred had privately voted for Hillary Clinton. He appreciated that she \u201cstood up for the fifty-six million \u2018invisible voters\u2019 with disabilities.\u201d Unfortunately, he wrote in his book, \u201cthose statements were too quiet as Donald outworked, outhustled, and out-steamrolled her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fred Trump voted in 2020 for Joe Biden, who also shared some of his priorities\u2014among them investing in home-based care for seniors and disabled people. The House passed that provision in Biden\u2019s original Build Back Better Act, but it was left out<\/a> of the renamed \u201cInflation Reduction Act\u201d that Biden eventually signed\u2014a casualty of nearly two years of sausage-making.<\/p>\n

Nine days after Biden abruptly dropped out<\/a> of the 2024 race, with the July 30 publication of his book and a raft of interviews to promote it, Fred Trump went public as a Democrat and \u201ca different kind of Trump.\u201d By then, Vice President Kamala Harris was the Democratic nominee-in-waiting, and she soon pledged<\/a> in her platform to expand Medicare coverage of home care for seniors and disabled people.<\/p>\n

Fred, in a September 4 appearance on CNN, offered<\/a> to campaign for Harris \u201cif I\u2019m asked.\u201d He also noted that he had personal ties to two swing states: Michigan (his mother was born in Kalamazoo) and Pennsylvania (he, his father, and his older son, Cristopher, attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, and he has family in the state).<\/p>\n

It is not unheard of for relatives to denounce politicians in their family. The Gosars<\/a> made ads in more than one campaign against their brother Paul\u2014a MAGA House member from Arizona\u2014even though they knew he would almost certainly win re-election in his conservative district. The Kennedys have tried for years to block the rise of anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to save their family legacy and protect the country from his ideas. They spoke out forcefully against<\/a> his 2024 presidential campaign, his endorsement<\/a> of Trump, and his appointment<\/a> as health and human services secretary, and in September called for him to resign<\/a> the post. Nothing has worked.<\/p>\n

What about a national race involving several closely fought swing states<\/a>? Fred Trump talked his way into the Democratic convention, but he was not invited to speak. Nor did he end up campaigning for Harris\u2014even after he wrote to her, he told me, and Lisa wrote to Gwen Walz (first lady of Minnesota and mother of a son with a nonverbal learning disorder<\/a>), saying \u201chere we are, we\u2019ll give it our all.\u201d The letters, he said, were met with silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was deemed not the right move for me to speak or to really get involved in the campaign at all,\u201d Fred said. \u201cAs a political junkie, I thought that was a very bad move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could Fred and Lisa have helped Harris win? Maybe. Fred would have been a new Trump publicly taking on the Trumps. His younger sister Mary, a clinical psychologist and author of 2020\u2019s much-discussed Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World\u2019s Most Dangerous Man<\/a>, had forged the tell-all path at a time when Fred III disapproved<\/a>. She told NPR she\u2019d vote for Biden<\/a> in 2020, and four years later joined<\/a> his spin-room team for the fateful June debate with her uncle.<\/p>\n

Now Fred was ready to help Harris, from his perspective as a real estate executive, a father who had faced a terrifying test with his third child, who had become an advocate for William and people with disabilities, and who would have worked to mobilize them and their supporters.<\/p>\n

My own instinct, at least in hindsight, would be to try anything, to throw everything at the wall, make a bet on novelty and counterintuition in an attention economy. That said, Harris was a risk-averse candidate plunged into an abbreviated campaign on a compressed time frame\u2014not a recipe for throwing in with the latest Trump family rebel.<\/p>\n

As Fred wrote in his book, the Trump name had been \u201ca double-edged sword\u201d as far back as 1995 and as recently as 2021. He got kicked out of his high-level job at Cushman & Wakefield that year after the January 6th Capitol riot, when the real estate services firm severed all ties with the Trump Organization. \u201cCushman was now a Trump-free zone, including no more me. I could change a lot of things, but I couldn\u2019t stop being a Trump,\u201d Fred said in his book.<\/p>\n

The name was not only toxic in the work world\u2014even his fundraising efforts for groups helping people with disabilities \u201chad gotten tough because of Donald,\u201d he wrote. Especially after Donald imitated<\/a> a reporter with a disability in 2015. It was not an aberration. Trump\u2019s idea of a Thanksgiving social post<\/a> ten years later was to call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz \u201cseriously retarded.\u201d<\/p>\n

In between came Fred\u2019s memoir, and two quotes from it that made headlines (though a Trump campaign spokesman called<\/a> them \u201ccompletely fabricated and total fake news\u201d).<\/p>\n

One came after a constructive White House meeting Fred had arranged for disability advocates. He wrote that his uncle seemed supportive, but then said: \u201cThose people. . . . The shape they\u2019re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.\u201d The second came a few years later, on a call with Fred about William\u2019s medical expenses after Trump had left office: \u201cI don\u2019t know. . . . He doesn\u2019t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fred wrote that he was appalled but tried to keep his cool. \u201cNo, Donald,\u201d I said. \u201cHe does recognize me.\u201d In a section about William\u2019s life as a young adult, he said his son loves swimming and music, watches sports with his brother, and communicates with his \u201cheart-melting blue eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same day his uncle used that R-word, Fred posted<\/a> his own holiday greeting: \u201cHappy Thanksgiving to all, and bless the caregivers that take care of my son William and the millions of disabled (determined) in our country. They deserve better pay, and our gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, a different kind of Trump.<\/p>\n

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