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A son watching his father’s bloodied face flash across the television screens. It’s July 13, 2024. The crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, is screaming. Secret Service agents are swarming. And Eric, the middle Trump son, thousands of miles away with his own children, is frozen, trying to protect his kids from the horror on screen while powerless to help the man who taught him to stand tall. That image anchors Eric Trump’s Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation, a memoir that reads like both a war diary and a confession. It’s the story of a family that has lived for nearly a decade at the epicenter of American political turbulence, told by the son of supposedly the most powerful man in the world. Before opening the book, I expected a barrage of justifications — political spin, score-settling, maybe even a few bitter swipes at old enemies. And yes, there are moments when Eric drops names: Democrats, Republicans, judges, attorneys general, mayors, journalists, even family members. But beneath the sharp edges lies a different portrait — one of loyalty, exhaustion, and an almost childlike determination to show his father not as an icon, but as a human being. Eric, the youngest child of Donald and Ivana Trump, grew up in two worlds — the larger-than-life luxury of Manhattan’s Trump Tower and the simple summers spent with his grandparents in communist Czechoslovakia. This memoir is less about power and politics and more about what it means to belong to a family constantly fighting for its place in history. The father, the son Eric is, above all, a devoted son. Across the 200-something pages, his reverence for his father surfaces constantly. Yet, beyond the filial devotion, he seeks to reveal Donald Trump not as a headline, but as a man. From learning to “never trust anyone” to watching the Mar-a-Lago raid unfold, Eric describes his father as a figure of composure even in chaos. He recounts the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Yet, he recalls his father remained calm, calling from his ICU bed to joke about it as an “earache.” The memoir also sheds light on Eric’s own role as a father. He recalls one poignant moment when his daughter, Carolina, asked when the election would finally be over so she could “get her parents back.” Scroll to Continue Recommended Articles “It felt like a knife to the heart,” he writes, describing the moment he realized the toll politics had taken on even the youngest members of his family. “They [his children] carried the weight in their own little ways—the missed dinners, the long goodbyes, the whispered prayers when we were gone.” A mother remembered His recollections of his mother, the late Ivana Trump, stand out as particularly tender. He describes her strict parenting methods and the grounding influence she had on her children. This memoir also marks one of the first detailed reflections on Ivana’s death, after she succumbed to alcoholism, “a gene unfortunately all too pervasive in our family,” he writes. He recounts the grim day of her passing—the drive to the scene, the cleanup, the inability to cry. More News: Guess who’s paying for Trump’s $300M ballroom ‘Black Swan’ trader books profit after Trump's decision Wall Street veteran drops major hint ahead of Trump's 3PM announcement Sam Bankman-Fried and selective justice In one instance, he draws a sharp comparison between the $450 million fine imposed on Donald Trump on Feb. 16, 2024, for allegedly inflating asset values and the $250 million penalty on now-defunct FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried for defrauding thousands of crypto investors. Eric also dives into how his family got into the world of cryptocurrency. He admits that the Trump family began embracing cryptocurrency after traditional banks distanced themselves during trials. Eric, in his book, still finds room for gratitude, pausing to thank the staffers, friends, and CEOs who remained loyal throughout. The verdict Eric Trump writes with more emotion than craft, but that emotion gives the book its pulse. He is defensive, yes, but also disarmingly sincere. Reading “Under Siege” requires empathy. What you will find is a surprisingly human voice inside the most scrutinized families on earth. A candid, conflicted, and surprisingly personal memoir. 4 out of 5.
