EDITORIAL: ‘Too Much and Never Enough’ by Mary Trump is a dud, not a ‘bombshell’

OPINION:

This, too, will pass, the adage counsels, noting the temporary nature, or ephemerality, of troubling aspects of the human condition. As with so much other “fake news” these days, the clucking of the mainstream media about supposed “bombshell” revelations in Mary Trump’s so-called tell-all book about her uncle, President Trump, too, will pass. Like a kidney stone, perhaps, but it will pass.

Democrats, the left and the mainstream media — but we repeat ourselves — are all agog over Mr. Trump’s niece’s new book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”

“The world’s most dangerous man”? Seriously? More dangerous than Kim Jong-un or Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin? The title of the book alone is reason enough not to take it seriously.

When Simon & Schuster announced in the spring it was publishing the book, Mr. Trump reflexively — and regrettably — took the bait. Via his brother, Robert, (another uncle of the author), a court injunction was sought to block its publication, citing a nondisclosure agreement “signed by Ms. Trump in 2001 as a condition of [a] financial settlement stemming from a familial inheritance dispute,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

They surely knew the effort wouldn’t succeed. In failing to heed the “this, too, will pass” admonition, they gave the book far more attention and publicity than it warrants or deserves.

The 214-page quasi-memoir, released July 14, will be long forgotten by November. Miss Trump’s hopes notwithstanding, her book likely will have negligible impact on the president’s re-election bid. It will be even less likely to do so than her previous bid to sabotage the president, which involved surreptitiously providing 19 boxes of Mr. Trump’s financial records to The New York Times in the summer of 2018. Does anyone even remember the resulting “bombshell” report?

You know that “there’s no there there” when The London Guardian runs an article, “Mary Trump’s book: Eight of its most shocking claims about the president,” and one of the eight is how Donald Trump 26 years ago supposedly told a swimsuited Mary Trump, “Holy sh**, Mary, you’re stacked.”

Those who will buy “Too Much and Never Enough” — which takes its name from its attempt to psychoanalyze the president and his “incredibly dysfunctional family” — didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 and won’t vote for him in 2020. Conversely, those who voted for him before won’t be dissuaded from doing so again, Miss Trump’s “Ph.D.” (in clinical psychology) appended to the author’s name on the cover notwithstanding.

It’s in that sense that we liken the book to a kidney stone, but a gallstone might be a better analogy, if only because of the considerable gall it took on Miss Trump’s part to drop this faux “bombshell” now, in a transparent bid to influence the outcome of November’s election. It’s apparently “payback” from Miss Trump, 55, still disgruntled over the inheritance issue 20 years later.

Now, in seeking to settle scores, Miss Trump will get a big “payday” from the book, which is said to have sold nearly 1 million copies already — most of them presumably to liberal Democrats like herself. (She admits to having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and intends to vote for Joe Biden in November, even though far-left Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, was her preferred choice for the Democratic nomination.)

Besides profiteering, if her book can take down the president in the process, so much the better in her view, but she’s likely to be disappointed, if the experience of conservative Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona Republican, is any indication. No fewer than six of Mr. Gosar’s nine siblings campaigned for his Democratic opponent in 2018. He fired back, calling his brothers and sisters “disgruntled Hillary supporters,” of whom “Stalin would be proud.” He was reelected to a fifth term with 68 percent of the vote.

The mainstream media has characterized the book as a “bombshell,” but it’s more like “revenge porn” (minus the compromising photos) from a malcontent with grudges, familial and political, to settle. This “bombshell” is mostly a dud that will change few, if any, minds about Donald Trump.