49 pages • 1-hour read
Under Siege: My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Before the Siege”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “My Father the Fighter”
The chapter opens with a line from Donald Trump’s The Art of the Comeback about going against the tide, serving as a blueprint for a life organized around contrarian bets. Eric describes his father’s reputation across construction, hospitality, and entertainment, arguing that scale and speed combined with a refusal to conform created both admirers and detractors. He describes growing up around construction sites and boardrooms, learning the cadence of deals, and observing the presentation of brand and property as part of a single strategy. To Eric, there is “no one better at selling a vision and a lifestyle” (24) than his father. He also lauds his father’s willingness to “punch back” (25) at anyone who attacks him.
Eric explains the link between celebrity and enterprise that predated politics, explaining how television amplified the Trump brand without substituting for business fundamentals. His later responsibilities came as the culmination of an apprenticeship by proximity, including hours in Trump Tower, site visits, and exposure to staff who executed plans at pace. As well as the good times with his father, Eric says that their true bond was built in “the toughest, lowest moments” (28). Such moments, he says, can teach a person who is truly loyal.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Family Business”
Eric Trump describes the lifelong apprenticeship he shared with brother Don Jr. and sister Ivanka inside the Trump Organization, long before the television show made the company famous. He frames the company as a global portfolio of hotels, golf courses, residences, commercial buildings, vineyards, and more, sustained by long-tenured employees treated like family. Until 2015, the siblings focused on development and acquisitions, not politics. Eric describes each child’s role: Don Jr., six years older, is a dealmaker and marketer who thrives in both wilderness and political combat. A Secret Service episode during their father’s presidency, in which agents panic over Don Jr.’s plan to hunt in Turkmenistan, illustrates the family’s unusual blend of business, politics, and security, with Eric urged to talk his older brother out of the potentially dangerous trip.
Eric describes his sister Ivanka as polished, design-minded, poised, and quietly funny. Eric casts himself as the detail obsessive who loves construction, finance, and the outdoors, equally comfortable in “a suit or in Carhartts” (31). He prides himself on inspecting loading docks and back-of-house spaces, insisting that invisible standards matter. He credits their father’s eye for value in turning underperforming properties into crown jewels. After the 2016 election, Ivanka and Jared moved to Washington, and the family entered politics as outsiders. Don Jr. split time between the company and campaigning.
Eric recounts how his parents kept the children grounded despite privilege. Summers in Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Republic) with their maternal grandparents taught scarcity, simplicity, and gratitude. Their mother, Ivana, emerges as a tough, elegant former elite skier and model who demanded manners, work, and resilience. She made the children take summer jobs for low wages and preached self-advocacy. Travel and culture created “social chameleons” (34) who could move between ballrooms and building sites. In later years, Ivana struggled with alcohol. Eric describes arriving at her townhouse after her fatal fall in 2022 and quietly cleaning the scene, then insists her life cannot be defined by its end. Excerpts from his eulogy celebrate her as an embodiment of the American Dream.
Eric recalls his early hands-on education on the Seven Springs estate, a 1919 mansion owned by the Trump Organization in Bedford, New York, as an experience that instilled respect for craftsmen and left no appetite for drugs or idle wealth. College internships in investment banking culminated in advice from mentor Derron Slonecker to join the family firm. Eric did so, starting in a cubicle, while Donald Trump set clear goals without micromanaging. A pivotal lesson came in 2007, when their father warned against a billion-dollar project in which his children were considering an investment. The 2008 crash vindicated Donald. Because they held back, the company could buy distressed, high-quality assets at steep discounts, especially golf clubs, hotels, and a winery, even as they fought off condo buyer lawsuits.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Apprentices”
Chapter 3 recounts the genesis and decade-plus run of The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, crediting producer Mark Burnett’s “urban survivor” (44) concept and claiming the series helped revive NBC while making Donald Trump an even more ubiquitous public figure. Eric argues that viewers saw his father unscripted, learning his manner with friends, staff, and strangers, and that this visibility helped the entire family become comfortable in front of the camera. He lists marquee-brand integrations and treats the show’s charity component as an often-overlooked engine for fundraising. Eric points to millions of viewers tuning into the finale, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a program that turned ratings into “business” (44).
Eric also situates the show in a political arc, suggesting that the series functioned as a long apprenticeship for the family in public communications, training them for the campaign arena. He further argues that critics underestimated how television created a direct line to voters who would later respond to Donald Trump’s rallies and messaging. In a 2015 meeting with Mark Burnett, Donald Trump declined to sign on for another season of The Apprentice, citing a desire to try “something else” (54). It was at this moment that Eric knew his father’s political ambitions were serious.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “2016”
Chapter 4 recounts the 2016 campaign and election night from Eric’s vantage point. He contrasts early doubts about his father’s “temperament” and “preparation” with primary-night milestones and the final shock of victory, as well as his own wife Lara’s battle with “awful network anchors” (67). He recalls the volume of messages after Hillary Clinton’s concession and describes how acquaintances tried to re-enter the family’s orbit. Eric portrays a post-election divide between public celebration and private decisions to distance or disengage, a shift Eric interprets as opportunism or capitulation to social pressure. The narrative continues through the night of November 8-9, referencing coverage of emotions at Clinton’s event and noting the preparation of two speeches in case of defeat. The chapter closes by re-emphasizing the scale of the win and by introducing a lesson Eric will revisit: Politics redraws personal networks with startling speed. Eric’s belief is that the campaign created a durable movement while also imposing social costs on friendships and professional relationships.
Part 1 Analysis
In Part 1, Eric charts his father’s political ascendency. Since this is Donald Trump’s story from the perspective of his son, The Apprentice plays a significant role. When Eric was a child, Donald Trump was enduring some of his most difficult periods as a businessman, and his move into entertainment offered him a new income stream and a chance to reinvent his personal brand. In Eric’s narrative, this move is an early lesson from his father in resilience. On reality television, Donald Trump played the role of a successful businessman, embodying the kind of figure Eric remembers so vividly from his childhood. As such, The Apprentice can be understood as the moment at which Eric began to see his own understanding of his father mirrored in the public consciousness. Echoing other commentators—including NBC executive John Miller, who in a 2024 US News and World Report op-ed apologized for The Apprentice’s role in facilitating Donald Trump’s political rise—Eric argues that The Apprentice paved the way for his father’s first presidential campaign in that it “made Donald Trump a household name, not only in America but around the world” (44). The Apprentice represents such a significant period of Donald Trump’s life that Eric frames his father’s decision not to take part in another season as the moment at which his political career truly began. Appearing on The Apprentice was significant, Eric suggests, but just as significant was choosing to leave the show in the past and move into a new period of political activity, a period build on the foundation laid by The Apprentice.
Throughout Under Siege, Eric shares nostalgic, loving, tender stories of his family that seek to paint the Trump family in the best possible light. Even when he is discussing his frequent physical fights with his older brother, he is doing so in the context of a loving fraternal relationship. These anecdotes underscore the theme of Faith as a Foundation for Political Action, as Eric’s faith in his family is the basis for his career. In Chapter 2, Eric writes in this vein about his relationship with his mother, Ivana Trump. As is typical for the book, he writes glowingly about her influence on her life and passionately about how his mother shaped him and his siblings. She was the “caviar and champagne” (35) to his father’s “meat and potatoes” (35), he says, describing Ivana Trump as an essential part of his personal development. The discussion of her death, however, is perhaps the most vulnerable Eric is willing to make himself in the book. In a passage that foreshadows the later assassination attempts on his father, he writes about the “gruesome trail of blood” (35) which is his dominant memory of his mother’s tragic death. Noting her alcohol use disorder in her later days, he remembers receiving a phone call and rushing to her house. Ivana had died by falling down the stairs, and Eric chose to “be cleanup guy” (35). He reverts to type, trying to be helpful and useful at a moment of emotional devastation. Eric is alone in this moment. In a literary sense, he is vulnerable in a way that is unlike any other moment in the book. There is no one to fight, nor any way he can blame this pain on the media or the Democrats. This real pain resists any attempt to fold it into a political narrative, in contrast to later sources of pain and strife in the book, which are all readily subsumed in to an overarching story of Opposition to the Trump Family as a Conspiracy.
Eric’s characterizations of his older siblings also help him to create his portrayal of The Binary Oppositions Underlying American Politics. Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric grew up in the same environment and shared many experiences, but these experiences have produced very different personalities. Ivanka, Eric says, is the “superstar” (31) who is at home in celebrity circles. Meanwhile, his older brother, Don Jr., is presented as an outdoorsman who prefers the wilderness to the refined environs of the Washington elite. They are, Eric suggests, examples of the two Americas he notes throughout the book. The contrast between the urban elite and the rural masses is, to Eric, one of the defining tensions in American society. Eric sees himself as a bridge between these two worlds, the sibling who emerges as a synthesis of his familial dialectic. Eric claims that he “can live in a suit or in Carhartts” (31), a comfort in every part of America that he recognizes in his father. Though Eric’s siblings do not play a significant role in the novel, they are useful thematic tools in Eric’s depiction of the tensions inherent to American society. These tensions, Eric suggests, are like all family differences in that they are not insurmountable.
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs