Meghan McCain asks Mary Trump if she wrote a tell-all for the paycheck

Meghan McCain of ABC’s “The View” criticized the book by Mary Trump during a Thursday interview, suggesting at one point that the president’s niece had written it for the “great paycheck.”

“What do you say to people like me who think this is just a great way for you to get a paycheck right now?” McCain said at one point.

“If I had wanted to cash in… I would have done this ten years ago… and I would not have been taking the risks that I’m taking,” Mary Trump said in response.

.@MeghanMcCain to Mary Trump: “What do you say to people like me who think this is just a great way for you to get a paycheck right now?”

Trump: “If I had wanted to cash in… I would have done this ten years ago… and I would not have been taking the risks that I’m taking.” pic.twitter.com/grPPGHYcHt

— The View (@TheView) July 23, 2020

Mary Trump told McCain she was entitled to her opinion on “Too Much and Never Enough,” which criticizes Trump fiercely. 

The author is critical of Trump in the book, writing that he was always out for himself and that he was belligerent and uncontrollable as a youth. She’s also said that she was devastated when he was elected president because she saw him as unfit for office. 

McCain during the interview offered skepticism about the Trump book, sayin that it made some in the book such villains that “I don’t actually end up believing the stuff written.”

She also compared the book to books that have been written about her own family that she described as “complete and total garbage.”

“Look, I think I made it clear to your publishers, I don’t like books like this,” McCain told her. “I don’t like family tell-all books, especially when it comes to families with fame and power. They’re told from the one side,” McCain said.

McCain questioned conclusions in Mary Trump’s books, saying she did not have close relationships with Trump’s children and thus would not understand the dynamic within the family. 

“I certainly have extended family who I don’t interact with, or certainly only interact with at funerals and things like that,” McCain said. “So, I don’t think people like that would know the inner workings of my immediate family dynamic in the way that you present it.”

McCain also highlighted how Mary Trump’s visitation to the White for her aunt’s birthday celebration in 2017 contradicted the notion that his niece would have published the book ten years ago. McCain adding the dinner was “on the taxpayer dime.”

Mary Trump said to focus on McCain’s points brought up during the interview is to detract from “the actually important things I write about in the book.”