In his new book The Return of Great Powers, which comes out Tuesday, reporter Jim Sciutto interviews several of Trump’s former advisers. All of them stressed that Trump regularly lavished praise on authoritarian leaders around the world, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “fantastic,” Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant,” and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un an “OK guy.”
Horrifyingly, Trump also said, “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” according to John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019.
“I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly told Sciutto. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”
Kelly said that Trump also praised Hitler for achieving complete loyalty from senior Nazi officials—and Trump expected similar fealty from the retired generals he brought on to his cabinet.
“He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly said. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal—that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”
“Hitler did some good things” would end absolutely anyone else’s campaign in America. And this guy still has a chance of winning.
His ex-wife Ivana said in their divorce hearings that he kept Mein Kampf on his bedside table. Very believable, but perhaps he had it just as a token since I’m not convinced he can really read.
Was it Mein Kampf or a book of Hitler’s speeches? I’ve heard both.
Here’s the fun part. Ivana said it was Hitler speeches. Trump says it might have been Mein Kampf.
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/ivana-trump-revealed-in-1990-vanity-fair-interview-that-her-ex-kept-hitler-speeches-in-a-cabinet-by-his-bed/
What a kamikaze of a defense…
More of a blitzkrieg, he’s hoping to prevail through the use of shock tactics and being overwhelmingly offensive.
Hmm you might be right. And if 2016 has taught us anything: it might work.
He’s a complete fucking nong, but he’s not that stupid that he can’t read.
I think they meant anything longer than a tweet or a newspaper article about himself. We know how his officials had to dumb down every briefing for him because he never read anything ahead of time and had a hard time in general comprehending basic topics.
He seems to have a problem reading teleprompters, the easiest thing to read since the invention of books in large print.
Part of that might be due to his refusal to wear his glasses in public.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-seen-wearing-glasses_n_5e1eac25c5b63211760b28cb
A bit of an exaggeration, sure. I suppose if he was motivated by something he truly loves like Hitler, he could sit down and read a book.
Not a chance. You can’t have it both ways, and there’s no way he had the patience to read an old book. He didn’t read intelligence briefings specifically made for him.
I promise you’d be surprised what being interested in a topic can do. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about intelligence briefings. But a book by a genocidal dictator? Now that will really pique his interest.
If it isn’t true that Donald Trump mostly reads Harlequin romance novels, it will still now be my headcanon.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-tariffs-eu-colorful-cards-2018-7
Being able to and wanting to, being practised in reading and actually understanding what you read are probably very different things. Some people decided that colorful flash cards work best with him. The news articles about him not reading his briefing materials but looking at the pictures are also out there. I think he reads everything that comes in the size of a flash card or a tweet, much longer than that and I have my doubts.
True. Most of the time he’s simply not interested in reading
It’s the illustrated version with the big boy toy gun.