Why Mary Trump Strongly Criticized Paul Ryan Over Donald Trump

When Donald Trump was first elected president in a shocking upset over Hillary Clinton that stunned Washington, D.C., as well as the world, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan wasn't sure how to handle him, as he was unlike any president the United States had ever seen. So, Ryan began doing his own research on dealing with "someone who is amoral and transactional," according to the new Bob Woodward and Robert Costa book, "Peril," about the last days of the Trump presidency (via CNN).

The book reveals that a Republican donor who also happened to be a doctor gave Ryan some advice and said, "You need to understand what narcissistic personality disorder is." The doctor sent him several links on the subject, and Ryan dove head-first into his own research. When he was done, Ryan was convinced that the new president had NPD. Now the former president's niece, clinical psychologist and author Mary Trump, has a few thoughts regarding Ryan's actions.

On an appearance on MSNBC's "The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell" on September 16, Mary Trump, author of the new book "The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal," told O'Donnell that Ryan should have known who he was dealing with from the start. She also took Ryan to task for not only turning the other cheek, but eventually running away, as Ryan chose not to seek re-election in 2018, along with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake.

"One of the things that's shocking about it is that Paul Ryan was allegedly found flat-footed after the election when anybody who was paying attention, anybody with some modicum of intelligence and insight who had met Donald for five minutes would have known what a deeply psychologically disordered person he was," she said. "So, for Paul Ryan to have waited for Donald to be in the Oval Office before doing his homework and attempting to put up safeguards long after he actually could have done something to make a difference is, I think, testament to how we got where we are.

"The kind of fecklessness of people like Paul Ryan and Jeff Flake, who instead of taking a stand against what was clearly a dangerous and incompetent person, they just stood aside and let him ascend to power and then have left the rest of us to deal with the quite serious fallout," she added (via MSNBC).