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 kaplan@forward.com or follow her on Twitter, @julianamkaplan
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