Mary Trump Says Donald Trump Didn't Change Republican Party

Mary Trump, an avid critic of former President Donald Trump and his niece, said her uncle didn't change the GOP but helped reveal certain things about the party.

Former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele asked Mary Trump during a podcast posted on Wednesday about what she saw happening "within the psychology of America before Donald Trump showed up."

"You know this as well as anybody. Donald didn't change the party, he revealed something about it, that for various reasons, it was expeditious to keep under wraps," she said.

"And he also gave people permission...to be their worst selves, which is why so many people got pushed out of the party, and so many other people like the new leaders of the party, [Georgia Representative] Marjorie Taylor Greene and [Florida Representative] Matt Gaetz, decided that it was their time, and they weren't wrong about this."

Mary Trump, a psychologist and author, also said that America reached its current "existential crisis" because it didn't face its "deepest darkest issues," referring to matters related to race.

"White people don't want to hear this...and I get it, but it's time to own up to the fact that we are here because not only have we never atoned for our original sins, we've never properly acknowledged them and now Republicans want to erase them entirely," she said.

Donald Trump's influence on the Republican Party has come into question in recent months, especially after the 2022 midterm elections when some Republicans turned on him because some of the candidates he endorsed lost key races. The GOP won back the House but failed to regain control of the Senate.

Trump on April 4 became the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges when he was arraigned in New York over claims he orchestrated a hush money payment of $130,000 paid by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet ahead of the 2016 presidential election about an affair she claims she had with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and has maintained his innocence in the case, accusing prosecutors of engaging in a politically motivated witch hunt.

In November, Trump announced his campaign for president in 2024 as he faces other legal issues, including the investigation of his actions surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; a probe in Fulton County, Georgia, centering on a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state; and his alleged mishandling of classified documents seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago home last summer.

He's also the subject of an ongoing civil rape trial in New York, where he is accused of raping writer E. Jean Carroll in the dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Trump has strongly denied the allegation, which he described as a "hoax," after Carroll went public with her claim in 2019.

Many in the GOP continue to be staunch supporters of the former president's 2024 bid, but many favor Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who hasn't announced a run. Others seeking the Republican nomination include former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, talk radio host Larry Elder, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton.

When asked about whether or not Trump is confident that Republicans would back him for the nomination, a spokesperson for Trump told Newsweek that the former president "has the support of everyday Americans from all backgrounds who want to Make America Great Again.

"That is why he is leading by wide margins in poll after poll, and there is nobody else who can generate the type of enthusiasm and excitement like President Trump can."

A poll conducted by NBC News in April showed that 46 percent of Republican voters supported Trump for the nomination, compared to 31 percent for DeSantis, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Haley had single-digit support.