Mary Trump says media must describe Donald Trump and the GOP as ‘fascist’

Mary Trump, the niece of Donald Trump, has said it’s time for the media to start describing the Republican Party and the former president as “fascist”.

In her new book The Reckoning, Ms Trump says: “Still arguing about whether or not to call Donald a fascist is the new version of the media’s years-long struggle to figure out if they should call his lies lies.”

Ms Trump who was appearing on MSNBC to promote the title, said Democrats and the media needed to be much more outspoken in condemning the GOP.

She said: “Democrats can’t keep playing by old rules because Republicans have burned the rule book,” adding “pulling punches and using language that’s polite isn’t going to get us where we need to be”.

The psychologist, who is extremely critical of her uncle, accused the Republican Party of fascism for enabling the former president, and said members of the GOP “know they have a very narrow path to stay in power and it is by appealing to the worst instincts in the American people”.

“One thing that Donald did was expose the extent to which being an open racist is a winning proposition in the Republican Party,” she said.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell read out a passage from Ms Trump’s book that described the former president as an “instinctive fascist who is limited by his inability to see beyond himself”.

“What’s more relevant now is whether the media – and the Democrats – will extend the label of fascism to the Republican Party itself,” Mr O’Donnell said, before asking Ms Trump: “should we extend that label to the Republican Party?”

She replied: “Without question.”

Ms Trump said The Reckoning, which is out August 17, examined the U.S. during the Covid pandemic when it was “so vulnerable” and when democracy “was on the brink – the American experiment was on the edge of failure”.