
The 45th president “was profoundly shaped by Fred,” O’Brien says now.

That brings us to the flip side of the warm familial cocoon, as described by Philip Larkin: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”ĭuring the course of reporting his 2005 biography TrumpNation, journalist Tim O’Brien recalls that Donald only spoke of his mother after extensive prodding. No modern president has lacked the ability to demonstrate public compassion several presidents-most recently Barack Obama during a speech after the massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School-held no compunction crying in public during times of great national tragedy. American presidents tend to give their mothers high marks: There’s FDR’s original helicopter mom, Sara Delano Clinton’s strong survivor of a single mother, Virginia Kelley and the beloved matriarch Barbara Bush, among other 20th- and 21st-century presidential mothers. “God bless my mother all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her,” said Lincoln of his mother, Nancy, who died when he was seven years old. That has seemed to hold true for our presidents. There’s supposedly no relationship in life so central, so formative, as the child’s relationship with their mother.

The first Sunday Isle of Lewis ferry launched-to accompanying protests-just over a decade ago. The island is still conservative and faithful: The local tourism board advises making sure your hotel will actually be open on Sunday, as most businesses on the island are shut down on the Sabbath.
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The congregation was part of the Free Church of Scotland, an evangelical movement that had splintered from the Church of Scotland almost a century earlier in protest of the corruption of landed gentry. In rain boots, they’d trudge through mud, wind, and water every Sunday to worship at the Stornoway High Church, writes journalist Nina Burleigh in her book Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women. Today, it’s still a more-than-two-hour ferry to reach the Scottish mainland from Stornoway, the isle’s largest town (current population: around 6,000).Įven attending church was a trek for the MacLeod family. Mary, the youngest of 10 children of Mary Smith and Malcolm MacLeod, grew up there, in the small village of Tong, where the Gaelic-speaking family farmed and lived on their croft, a small plot of land on a tidal flat. She’s probably pretty smart-at least her friends thought so-and ambitious enough to want to leave her home on the remote Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides. Early pictures of Mary Anne MacLeod tell a story of hope and confidence: She’s smiling, she’s poised, fresh-faced and looking ready for adventure.
