Donald Trump’s niece says his re-election would herald ‘end of American democracy’ in new book

The publication of the book comes amid a legal battle between Mary Trump and her family

Donald Trump’s niece warns that the re-election of her uncle would herald “the end of American democracy” in a new book that explores the president’s life and psychological health.

Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and daughter to Mr Trump's late brother, paints a picture of a man who was so scarred by his toxic upbringing that he is today unfit to be president.

“If he is afforded a second term, it will be the end of American democracy,” she writes in the prologue of the book, titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

"Honest work was never demanded of him, and no matter how badly he failed, he was rewarded in ways that are almost unfathomable. He continues to be protected from his own disasters in the White House," Ms Trump writes.

"But now the stakes are far higher than they've ever been before; they are literally life and death. Unlike any previous time in his life, Donald's failings cannot be hidden or ignored because they threaten us all."

The publication of the book, due to be released next week, follows a legal battle between Ms Trump and her family, who tried to block its release by claiming it violated a 20-year-old non-disclosure agreement signed in a lawsuit settlement over the will of Fred Trump, the president’s father and Ms Trump’s grandfather.

The publisher, Simon & Schuster, describes the book as a “revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him”.

Ms Trump, 55, who has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, uses both her education and experience of growing up around the Trump dynasty to explain the president's behaviour today.

She details how, in her view, emotional abuse by his father “destroyed” Mr Trump and robbed him of the “ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion”.

“Child abuse is, in some sense, the expectation of ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’. Donald directly experienced the ‘not enough’ in the loss of connection to his mother at a crucial development stage, which was deeply traumatic,” she writes.

She adds that his father’s failure to make the younger Trump “feel safe or loved” during this time would “scar him for life”.

“The personality traits that resulted – displays of narcissism, bullying, grandiosity – finally made my grandfather take notice but not in a way that ameliorated any of the horror that had come before.”

She claims Mr Trump "meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy".

Mary’s father, Fred Jr, was president Trump’s eldest brother. He died of an alcohol-related illness in 1981.