President Donald Trump has considered whether disabled people should be allowed to die during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new book written by his nephew.
Fred Trump III, the psychologist and author Mary Trump’s brother and Fred Trump Jr.’s eldest son, writes in his upcoming book, “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way,” that he attended a meeting in May 2020 with the former president, several administration officials and disability rights advocates.
His uncle made the remarks at the meeting, according to excerpts published by The Independent.
After the meeting, Fred III said he and his uncle returned to the Oval Office. [Human Services Secretary Alex] “Azar met with his uncle at the request of the then-president,” the outlet reported. “Azar’s uncle greeted him, saying, ‘Hey, bro, how are you?'”
After his son told him things were “going well” and thanked him for the meeting, Trump began thinking aloud about the subject of the 45-minute discussion he had just returned from.
“Those people,” he trailed off, according to the book, “considering their health, their expenses, it might be better if they were dead.”
His nephew wrote that at the time he “really didn’t know what to say.”
Fred Trump III has a strong interest in the needs of people with disabilities because his son, William Trump, was diagnosed with a rare seizure disorder as a toddler, leaving him with significant cognitive and physical disabilities, the report said.
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He attended the meeting along with other disability rights advocates, the former president, then-Health and Human Services Secretary Azar and White House COVID-19 task force member Dr. Brett Giroir.
The former president infamously mocked journalist Serge Kovaleski, who has a condition called arthrogryposis, during a speech in Colorado shortly after his first election in 2016, but he claims he was mocking the journalist’s servility and not imitating the condition’s symptoms in his hands and wrists.
“Trump’s account of what happened in Colorado is simply not credible,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote in 2016. “First of all, we’ve already established that Kovaleski did not kneel or say he made a mistake. And what’s more, Trump appears to actually be paraphrasing a brief statement by Kovaleski about not remembering thousands of people celebrating. Trump now says he was just miming kneeling, which he wasn’t.”
“Trump is clearly emulating Kovaleski’s disability, which he has arthrogryposis, a condition that noticeably limits joint function,” he added. “Trump claims he did not know Kovaleski, who extensively covered Trump’s questionable business dealings while he was a reporter for the New York Daily News from 1987 to 1993.”