Under Siege: My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation

Under Siege is a 2025 insider political memoir written by Eric Trump. The book charts Eric’s life across business and electoral cycles, blending behind-the-scenes campaign anecdotes with corporate succession and media strategy to argue that personal and national fortunes are intertwined. 

This guide is written using the 2025 Threshold edition of Under Siege.

Summary

Eric Trump introduces his father, future US President Donald Trump, as a contrarian builder whose work ethic and appetite for risk define both his company and his family. Eric describes how growing up surrounded by his father’s businesses taught him a great deal. Using an epigraph from Trump: The Art of the Comeback (1997), which his father cowrote with Kate Bohner, he describes lessons learned in childhood while sketching a portrait of a family culture of loyalty and resilience. Eric positions celebrity as a by-product of enterprise, not its engine, and frames his later leadership as the natural extension of a long apprenticeship served under his father. The skills that built properties and a television brand became the means of navigating political pressure years later.

Recounting his childhood, Eric describes how his apprenticeship under his father and alongside his siblings taught him about business. He claims to be as comfortable in work clothes as he is in a suit due to his experience of manual labor jobs in his youth. He praises his mother’s influence and pays tribute to her by citing from the eulogy he gave at her funeral.

Eric recalls his father’s reality TV show, The Apprentice, as a ratings juggernaut that showcased Donald Trump’s decision-making style and familiarized the family with broadcast exposure. He argues that the show prepared them for politics by shaping public perception and teaching them media fluency. When his father declined to return for another season of the show in 2015, Eric knew that his father’s political ambitions were real. Eric narrates the 2016 campaign from skepticism to victory, focusing on election night and the immediate aftermath. He records shifting social dynamics, with old friends seeking access and others distancing themselves. Media reactions, the preparation of alternate speeches, and the final victory speech underscore the campaign’s improbability and the movement’s momentum, teeing up the transition from political competition to institutional conflict.

Eric describes the post-election restructuring that moved day-to-day control of the Trump Organization to the family while Donald Trump served as president. He points to the January 2017 plan, subsequent dispositions (notably the Washington, DC, hotel sale), and decisions meant to prevent conflicts, while arguing critics misread business moves as political maneuvers. He also outlines how he differs from his father as a businessman. Eric portrays an immediate adversarial climate in Washington, citing early impeachment talk, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning not to disparage the work of America’s intelligence agencies, and corporations refusing to be associated with the new president. He positions himself as the organizational buffer while political fights escalated, previewing the barrage of complaints, subpoenas, and lawsuits that would define the “siege.”

Eric Trump describes how he spent a decade building a St. Jude fundraising operation that he says kept expenses unusually low by relying on volunteers, vendor donations, and in-kind use of Trump golf properties, producing large totals for pediatric cancer care. He calls it the proudest work of his career. In 2017, he writes, that record collided with politics when AG Eric Schneiderman announced an investigation and served a subpoena, triggering months of document production and headlines alleging impropriety. He frames the probe as a political response to scrutiny of Democratic figures.

Eric casts doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, citing incremental moves that, he claims, made the results susceptible to manipulation. He highlights expanded mail-in voting and small margins in key states as evidence of systemic fragility.  No single episode, he suggests, explains the result. Rather, many small decisions and narratives produced a cumulative effect he calls a thousand cuts, necessitating vigilance at each procedural step and skepticism toward early media frames.

Eric argues that state and local officials pursued the Trumps with a target-then-theory mindset—first targeting the family for persecution and then seeking the evidence that would justify that persecution. He points to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s longstanding focus on the family and to Manhattan DA efforts which allowed a state subpoena for tax records. He casts civil valuation disputes as politicized fraud claims and portrays the cumulative subpoenas and testimony demands as designed to squeeze insiders rather than to investigate neutrally. Eric ties a 2024 New York conviction to what he calls a wider network of political, legal, and media forces. He sketches a matrix of opposition, featuring local prosecutors, judges, and pressure on former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. He praises frontline law enforcement officers while criticizing agency leadership. He argues that officialdom polices political dissent while overlooking other priorities.

Eric uses stories from media and governance to argue that national leadership under the Biden Administration prioritized politics over competence. At the same time, the Trump Organization was succeeding despite pressure from inspectors, subpoenas, and the media tactics. Landmark deals, including the Bally’s Ferry Point sale and a record-setting Old Post Office transaction, took place even as prosecutors tried to scare off clients. He credits employees and a results-first culture with navigating the headwinds and insists that performance, not politics, ultimately defined the period.

Eric Trump gives a minute-by-minute account of the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Watching with his children, he sees the bullet graze his father’s ear and agents envelop the stage. He describes the long wait before Donald Trump stands again. The next day, his father tells him that absolutely nothing changes. Next, Eric covers the campaign’s late-stage mood after July 13. Eric Trump describes defiant crowds and the RNC tribute to Corey Comperatore, the firefighter accidentally killed by the assassin who tried to kill his father. Eric, like his father, believes that the best revenge is success.

Eric closes by fusing the family’s business battles with the movement’s political victories, arguing that pressure forged resilience and expanded support. He reprises themes of institutional overreach and citizen solidarity, ending with a vow of continued engagement. The Epilogue functions as an affirmation that the “siege” did not break the family or the movement.