The Real Reason Mary Trump Kept Her Sexuality A Secret

There's no shortage of bombshells just waiting to break within the Trump clan. Ex-President Donald Trump may have exited the White House in January, but the slew of memoirs hitting shelves continues to keep us informed about the inner workings of one of America's most controversial families.

Case in point? The book, "I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House," dropped in October and shed light on how Jared and Ivanka Trump once tried to crash a meeting with Her Royal Majesty. "I finally figured out what was going on," author and former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham wrote. "Jared and Ivanka thought they were the royal family of the United States." Given that the public has been eagerly gobbling up any media tidbits about the Trump family, there's sure to be plenty more secrets to emerge in the future. But in the meantime, that same appetite for juicy info also extends to people outside of the Trumps' inner circle, aka their extended family members.

With that said, let's take a look at Mary L. Trump, Donald's niece, who opened up about the ugly moments she supposedly witnessed within the Trump clan in her memoir, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man." As Mary claims, the family's prejudice even prompted her to keep her sexuality a secret.

Mary Trump doesn't hold back from slamming the entire Trump family in her 2020 book, in which she also traces the timeline of abuse dating back to patriarch Fred Trump, or Donald Trump's father. Per USA Today, Mary diagnoses Fred as "a high-functioning sociopath, to whom love meant nothing," thanks to her PhD in clinical psychology. As a result of Fred's cruelty, Trump dynamics were rife with emotional abuse.

Mary notes that the family was also quick to employ derogatory slurs, according to a 2020 interview with The Washington Post. "Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the n-word or use anti-Semitic expressions," she claimed, adding that she believes her uncle, Donald Trump, to be racist. "It comes easily to him, and he thinks it's going to score him points with the only people who are continuing to support him," Mary added.

While Mary didn't agree with the way her family was quick to belittle others, these derogatory insults didn't impact her personally ... until they did. "Homophobia was never an issue because nobody ever talked about gay people, well, until my grandmother called Elton John the f-word," she explained. As a gay woman, Mary was frightened by her grandmother's words, and chose to conceal her true sexuality from her family. "I'd realized it was better that she didn't know I was living with ... a woman," Mary wrote in her memoir (via Queerty).

According to an interview with The Advocate, there was never an "aha moment" when Mary Trump realized that she was gay; however, she knew instinctively not to come out to her family. "Even though homophobia wasn't really explicit in my family, growing up, no one talked about homosexuality one way or another," Donald Trump's niece explained. "My family was so anti-everything, anything that was different from them. So, I just assumed they were antigay, and that was something they would not tolerate."

But hiding her sexual orientation didn't take too much of a toll because "I really didn't have such a close relationship with my family," Mary told The Advocate, adding that "my friends have been my family throughout my life." Mary's homosexuality appears to be only one of many factors that led to her schism from the rest of the Trump clan.

Per the The Washington Post, she has "long been estranged from her family following a dispute over inheritance, among other things," which has allowed the Trumps to attack her memoir, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man." "This is a book of falsehoods, plain and simple," former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told the outlet. But however Mary attacks her famous family members, it remains her right to share her sexual identity experience with the rest of the world however she chooses.