President Donald Trump’s older sister, Maryanne, has described him as a liar who has no principles in a series of audio recordings made by her niece, Mary L. Trump, in 2018 and 2019.
The recordings were provided to The Washington Post, which published them online Saturday night. In the recording, Ms. Barry can be heard disparaging her brother’s performance as president.
“His goddamned tweet and the lying, oh, my God,” she says in one of the recordings posted by the newspaper. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying.”
Ms. Trump is the author of the recently published book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” In it, she recounted how Mr. Trump’s upbringing turned him into what she called a reckless leader.
The audio recordings contain observations from Ms. Barry that do not appear in Ms. Trump’s book. According to The Post, Ms. Trump secretly recorded 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Ms. Barry about the president and his upbringing. The paper said Ms. Trump provided transcripts and audio excerpts.
In a statement provided by a White House spokesman, Mr. Trump dismissed the accusations and referred to the recent death of his younger brother, Robert S. Trump. “Every day it’s something else, who cares,” the president said. “I miss my brother, and I’ll continue to work hard for the American people. Not everyone agrees, but the results are obvious. Our country will soon be stronger than ever before.”
In one conversation published by The Post, Ms. Barry tells Ms. Trump what ended up being one of the most explosive allegations in the book by the president’s niece: that Mr. Trump cheated to get into college by having someone else take the SAT for him.
“He went to Fordham for one year and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams,” Ms. Barry told Ms. Trump. “SATs or whatever. That’s what I believe,” she said.
Ms. Barry, who was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald W. Reagan, says in one conversation that the president helped her get that appointment by asking his lawyer, Roy Cohn, to urge Mr. Reagan to appoint more female judges. Ms. Barry says the president once said to her, “Where would you be without me?”
