Donald Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bed, according to his ex-wife

[MrScorpio]

According to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump once told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that her husband, real-estate mogul Donald Trump, now a leading Republican presidential candidate, kept a book of Hitler's speeches near his bed.

"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 ... Hitler's speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist," Marie Brenner wrote.

Hitler was one of history's most prolific orators, building a genocidal Nazi regime with speeches that bewitched audiences.

"He learned how to become a charismatic speaker, and people, for whatever reason, became enamored with him," Professor Bruce Loebs, who has taught a class called the Rhetoric of Hitler and Churchill for the past 46 years at Idaho State University, told Business Insider earlier this year.

snip

In the Vanity Fair article, Ivana Trump told a friend that her husband's cousin, John Walter "clicks his heels and says, 'Heil Hitler," when visiting Trump's office.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-used-to-keep-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-according-to-his-ex-wife-a6765391.html

[Major Nikon]

1. In Trumps defense, only one of his ex-wives are saying this

The other three are bound by non-disclosure agreements.

[VMA131Marine]

4. He only has two ex-wives:

Ivana and Marla Maples. Who do you think is the third?

[Major Nikon]

7. Melania

More accurately described as his future ex-wife

[VMA131Marine]

14. I'm sure that she'll outlive him

[Major Nikon]

19. His longest marriage lasted 14 years

The next lasted 6 years.

He's already 11 years in to his current one.

At the rate he's going he won't be married to his current one that much longer.

[yourpaljoey]

2. This line of attack is silly

[MrScorpio]

3. Drumpf's a fucking Nazi

However, everything that he has said did sound better in the original German.

[Marrah_G]

13. No, it really isn't

If we fail to shine a light on the truth of what he is then we are no better then the others in history.

[Skittles]

21. yes, there no similarity there

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/05/politics/donald-trump-florida-pledge-torture/index.html

[global1]

5. The Fourth Reich....nt

or is that the fourth wife?

[hobbit709]

6. Hitler had grandiose building projects too.

[malthaussen]

12. He actually fulfilled some of them.

Most of them didn't last too long. One of his most prophetic promises: "Give me twelve years, and you won't recognize your towns!" That was said in 1933.

-- Mal

[msongs]

8. it's well known that some people use boring and tedious books as a sleep inducer nt

[Hekate]

16. Hitler was a charismatic speaker with an exceptional propaganda team. He went very far. nt

[ohnoyoudidnt]

18. Yes, that must be the reason for it.

It's not like Trump has an interest in manipulating crowds.

[aikoaiko]

9. As odious as Trump is, I will not denigrate someone based on reading a book.

Some professors use Hitler's speeches as an example of a rhetorical style.

[MrScorpio]

11. The first NYT article on Hitler serves as a reminder about why we can't downplay hateful rhetoric

This November 1922 article about Hitler in the New York Times should be a stark reminder just how dangerous rhetoric can be:

But, several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as bait to catch messes of followers, and keep them aroused, enthusiastic and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”
I’m not saying a Trump presidency would lead to mass genocide on the scale of the Holocaust. But, his rhetoric is already dangerous. Watch as his supporters shove and scream at a young black woman at a Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday night, while Trump himself can be heard yelling “Get out!”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/03/03/1495132/-The-first-NYT-article-on-Hitler-serves-as-a-reminder-about-why-we-can-t-downplay-hateful-rhetoric?detail=tumblr

[Hekate]

17. My late MIL was Viennese, leaving town with the Anschluss on her heels. She saw it coming earlier...

....but could not persuade her parents to leave everything behind, so she fled without them.

As my husband told me, on the one hand they saw this as just another bad patch of pogroms that would pass (they were originally from Russia), and on the other hand and even more important, Austria and Germany were centers of European culture, art, music, philosophy, medicine -- few indeed could believe that the horrors to come were even possible.

Trump. Well, after Dubya was installed in what amounted to a coup d'etat, I no longer fully believe that our inherent systems will protect us. GOTV.

[salin]

10. his oratorical style is more like Triumph the Insult Dog

[Hekate]

15. 5th Rec, MrScorpio

Is this a great nation or what

[Initech]

20. Heil Der Trumpenfuror!