GOP Strategist Rehashes ‘Trump Reads Hitler’ Charge On MSNBC
Donald Trump Image by Getty Images
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt revived allegations that President Trump used to obsessively read Adolf Hitler’s speeches in an appearance Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Schmidt said that Trump’s “only affinity for reading anything were the Adolf Hitler speeches he kept on his nightstand.” It appears that Schmidt was referencing an allegation dating back to President Trump’s divorce from Ivana Trump.
In a 1990 Vanity Fair profile following the couple’s split, which was republished in 2015, Marie Brenner reported that Ivana Trump told her lawyer that her ex-husband read “My New Order,” a collection of Hitler’s speeches from before 1939. While Schmidt says Trump kept the speeches on his nightstand, Ivana said he kept them in a “cabinet by his bed.”
When Brenner asked Trump about the speeches, he responded: “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.”
Davis clarified to the reporter: “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.”
In the Morning Joe appearance, Schmidt went on to lambast Trump’s election, and cited him as the reason for America’s “decline.” Schmidt served as Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign manager in 2008.
Last week, Schmidt announced he was leaving the GOP.
Juliana Kaplan is a news intern at The Forward. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @julianamkaplan
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
