Former President Donald Trump revived his inflammatory remarks about immigrants during two campaign stops over the weekend, claiming that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” This rhetoric closely echoes a phrase found in Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf, a work that some doubt Trump has read. However, a 1990 interview with Trump’s first ex-wife, Ivana Trump, published in Vanity Fair, revealed that Trump kept a collection of Hitler’s speeches in their bedroom.
In the interview, Ivana recounted an incident where a Trump Organization employee would reportedly greet Trump with a “Heil Hitler” salute as a family joke. Additionally, Ivana mentioned that her husband occasionally read Hitler’s collected speeches, specifically a book titled My New Order, which he kept in a cabinet by his bed.
Marie Brenner, the author of the post-divorce profile, shared that Ivana had informed her lawyer, Michael Kennedy, about Trump’s interest in Hitler’s speeches. Kennedy, taking it seriously, safeguarded a copy of My New Order in his office.
Trump’s response to the revelation was somewhat ambiguous. When asked about receiving Hitler speeches from his cousin John, he initially hesitated. Later in the conversation, he stated that if he had such speeches, he would never read them.
It’s worth noting that Trump has not shied away from comparisons to Hitler, and this incident adds a layer of complexity to the discussion, given the reported presence of Hitler’s speeches in his personal collection
Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that 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. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
It is not a secret that Donald Trump does not mind being compared to the Nazi dictator. He also might have thought that he did have a copy of Mein Kampf:
“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”
“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.” (“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.”)
