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
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
