A 1990 profile in Vanity Fair, on the decay of Donald and Ivana’s marriage, contained this ugly, foreboding detail Ivana spilled to her divorce lawyer, recounted in VF. “From time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed….
“Hitler's speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.” [Ed. note — I wasn’t familiar with the phase that reporters of the day dubbed the “phony war” (Oct ‘39- Mar ‘40) because the Allies failed to launch a serious land operation response to the conquest of Poland in Sep. 1939. Now I know.]
Trump’s half-denial, in 1990, about having the book makes it all the more likely it is so. See his deliberate evasion about it, below. If you’re looking for an oratory inspiration to the racial hatred and the vile crowd incitement that Trump falls back on, this is a key part of it.
Now remember, this was reported 25 years before his run in 2015-16 for president — so the profile is not politically motivated. From the Vanity Fair 1990 article (republished online in 2015), here’s what Trump told Brenner:
“If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them."
The book of propaganda, racial and nationalist division, and grievance speeches created by Hitler, My New Order, was given to Trump by his friend Marty Davis, the chairman of Paramount (and Davis also confirmed it to the article’s author, see below).
Here is the back-and-forth about it in the 1990 VF profile between Donald and Marie Brenner:
"Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?"I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. "Who told you that?"
Brenner did not tell him the source, that it was through Ivana’s divorce lawyer, Michael Kennedy (or Ivana herself).
"I don't remember," I said.
"Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew."
Brenner reached Paramount’s Marty Davis to check.
"I did give him a book about Hitler," Marty Davis said. "But it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting.
“I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish."
So it adds just one more twist that Trump thought if he pretended Davis was a Jew it would somehow put a better sheen on it. The Vanity Fair article is titled, “After the Gold Rush” and it is available online.
If you’ve gotten chills this week, learning that children are getting stolen from their mothers and fathers in the border states, I know this is one more very chilling clue to the psyche of the man who scooped the electoral vote to inhabit the White House.
No broadcaster shared this insight from Ivana in the runup to 2016 that I ever heard. [This was one of many grievous pre-election press failures.] But one print story in the Weekly Standard on March 1, 2016, by writer Mark Hemingway, recognized a problem:
“Of all the crazy revelations about Donald Trump, arguably the one that seems most alarming, is that he has a fondness for reading Hitler speeches. Now the charge was made by his first wife Ivana relating to his divorce proceedings, but when asked about it, Trump's denial was less than reassuring.” (And Hemingway reprints the info shown above from Vanity Fair, including “If I had these speeches..., I would never read them."
Like a dangerous demagogue, to incite resentment and fear, Trump turns to false and inflated dangers — as if we’re facing a mounting crisis now of record-high border crossings. But the figures collected each year by Customs and Border Protection, show that is Trump’s deception.
Apprehensions at the southwest border in 2017 and estimated 2018 would be at about one-third the rate of 2005, and an even smaller fraction of the 1999-2000 rate. Even so, Trump is driving fear.
Crime and incarceration rates are higher for native Americans, by far, than for legal or even illegal immigrants.
The Cato Institute reports (June 12), “The evidence that legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated, convicted, or even arrested for crimes is so overwhelming that even immigration restrictionists like Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies admit that, “A lot of data does suggest immigrants are less likely to be involved in crime.”
But Trump cites frightening anecdotes of very rare violent offenses just to inspire terror among his adherents. And sow fear of the “other” ethnic or racial group.
It turns out, he had the exactly right teacher for sowing fear and revulsion.