Mary Trump, estranged niece of President-elect Donald Trump, warned in a recent blog post that her uncle's election victory "is much worse than 2016."
On Wednesday, the day after Election Day, the vocal critic of her uncle discussed the vote propelling him to a second term in the White House: "I really did think we were better than this" and calling the outcome a "violent, reckless decision" on her personal blog.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign for comment via email on Thursday.
The post came hours after it was confirmed that Trump won the 2024 presidential election, securing more than the required 270 Electoral College votes, as well as the popular vote. As of Thursday, Trump has 295, with Arizona and Nevada not fully reported.
"There's no false hope; no silver lining," she said about the coming years under the Trump administration. "I think it's fair to say it will be much worse for those of us who fought as hard as we could to make sure we never had to wake up to this nightmare," she added.
"The fascism is here, and we have to confront it head-on," Mary Trump said of the incoming administration.
President-elect Trump has been called a fascist by those who worked in his administration, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who described Trump as being "fascist to the core."
John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff and a retired general, said the incoming Republican president "certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure," in an October interview with The New York Times.
More than a dozen former Trump administration officials have signed a letter supporting Kelly's statements.
Trump has denied the allegations, and at a campaign rally a week ahead of the election, he told the crowd, "I'm not a Nazi, I'm the opposite of a Nazi."
Steven Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek in late October that the letter "is nothing more than disgruntled, former low-level employees who had remarkably undistinguished careers in government and are now trying to survive as Never Trump pundits fighting over cable news contracts."
The statement continued, "The fact remains they did not serve their country and President well, and will have to live with that dishonor for the rest of their miserable lives."
An ABC News/Ipsos poll before Kelly's comments were publicized found that nearly half of Americans see Trump as a fascist. But supporters of Trump argue that he simply represents a strong form of nationalism rather than fascism, adding that he worked within the framework of the U.S. Constitution.
In her post, Mary Trump predicted "the tyranny" of the Trump administration will "engulf what once was the world's greatest democracy."
In 2020, she published Too Much and Never Enough, a tell-all book about her uncle and his family, in which she wrote that he is "utterly incapable of leading this country and it's dangerous to allow him to do so."
After its release, Donald Trump called the book "disgraceful." He told then-Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that "she was not exactly a family favorite," adding, "We didn't have a lot of respect or like for her."
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