Former president’s niece and critic Mary Trump is bringing her podcast to LA for a live show – Orange County Register

A few weeks away from her first-ever live podcast show, Mary Trump, former President Donald Trump’s niece and one of his harshest critics, says she’s still sorting out what the LA live event will entail.

“We’re still working on the format,” she says as she introduces The Mary Trump Show podcast to a live audience. “I think the core of the show will be what we do each week. Just have a group of people talk about the most important thing that happens that day.”

Since the podcast debuted in December, conversations have often focused on Mary Trump’s uncle Donald — and her audience’s excitement at seeing him face legal repercussions. (On a recent show, a listener asked the host if she would consider arresting the former president at a family reunion. Mary Trump replied that she would no longer be invited to such events.)

More recently, she says, she’s tried to take the conversations — with listeners, the political figures she interviews, and her group of progressive pod colleagues they call Nerd Avengers — away from the former president and more towards discussions of the upcoming ones Midterm elections and what to direct She sees the ongoing threats to American democracy.

The live show on Friday, October 21 at the Dynasty Typewriter at the Hayworth in Los Angeles will include all of that plus a few surprises, Trump says.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, here’s what else she said about her journey from a not-well-known member of the Trump family to one of her chief critics and a political polemic with an ever-expanding platform.

Q: This is your first live show – how do you see it developing?

A: We’re still playing around with things to add to the mix because we want it to be different. We want to give the people that come out live some sort of bonus material, because a lot of times when people do podcasts live on stage it’s the same thing that seems like a missed opportunity to me.

Q: How did the podcast come about? Have you been approached or reached out by the folks at Politicon (the podcasting group that hosts their show)?

A: I started thinking about doing a podcast back in the fall of 2020. And it just wasn’t the right time because of the elections. Then, because of the uprising, it wasn’t the right time, and then I wrote a book that completely occupied me. In all honesty, I just dropped it or actually forgot about it.

Then Politicon approached me, and it just ended up being a really good fit. They are really supportive and basically let me do whatever I want. And it’s nice to have someone to take care of all the technical stuff.

Q: How has the show changed since the first episodes aired?

A: The format has kind of evolved over time. I used to have the interview show that usually happens every Thursday. But every once in a while I throw in what I call an Ask Mary Anything Within Reason, because there are some things I don’t want people to ask me.

Q: Tell me about July 2020 when you decided to go public about your uncle.

A: It was really difficult for me not to say anything in 2016. But I was also well aware that my testimony would not have made any difference because it would have deserted everything else. It seemed pretty clear that Donald could do and say whatever he wanted with complete impunity, without consequences, and I had no proof of anything.

But I knew Donald was just going to be the worst person for the job. Such was the case in late spring 2017, when Susanne Craig of the New York Times approached me and made it clear that I do in fact have documents in my possession that could help, as she put it, to rewrite the Trump family’s financial history.

Then I thought, okay. I’ve always wanted to do something, but now I actually have a chance to prove something. Because I have these tangible documents, whatever it was, 40,000 pages of documents.

I had no intention of letting anyone know I was a source. But as we now know, it wasn’t enough. It should have been. So many things should have been, but it wasn’t, despite it being one of the most, if not the most, brilliant piece of investigative journalism I’ve seen. [Craig and two other New York Times reporters won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for stories in which Mary Trump’s documents provided information.]

The reason that had become possible (to speak out in July 2020) was that no one could say I was so upset anymore – well, I guess they could say I was this upset niece – but they couldn’t to say that I had no hard evidence of something.

Q: Why do you think podcast listeners, many of whom aren’t supporters of Donald Trump, are so interested in him?

A: Luckily the focus is shifting away from Donald. Although, let’s face it, he’s still a factor. He’s still a very, very big factor. It’s very hard to know what would have happened if the Republican Party had done what they should have done after his loss and just threw him off the stage and he didn’t play a role. Maybe I would be on an island somewhere, writing novels. But unfortunately it didn’t come to that.

So people are still interested, but it’s less about him and more about his impact. What will happen to him? And many of my questions relate to the future of this country which, as you know, is separate from him.

Q: Do you think it will be up and running again in 2024 and if so what happens?

A: The more trouble he’s in, the more urgent it becomes for him to run away, or at least pretend he’s running away. Whether he does is another question. The problem that has surfaced for those of us who are not legal experts is that court time runs much slower than political time. So being accused won’t stop him, in fact being accused will only convince him even more that he needs to run.

I mean, probably the best scenario – I don’t know if that would ever happen, but it’s kind of a fantasy – is that he runs away. He is challenged by someone like [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis. He loses the primary and then does everything in his power to make sure whoever beats him in the Republican primary can’t win. Or he operates third parties. That would be fun.

But he is a very disruptive force. I still think his race is a terribly dangerous thing because it is a devastating comment on this country’s utter inability to hold powerful corrupt white men accountable for anything, even armed insurrection against its own government.

The Mary Trump Show live

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday 21 October

Where: Dynasty Typewriters at Hayworth, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

How much: $20-$25

For more information: politicon.com/podcast-title/the-mary-trump-show or dynastytypewriter.com/events-calendar