Did Donald Trump Plagiarize Hitler's Theory on the Big Lie?

[TomCADem]

Lately, we have seen how Donald Trump has engaged in bigger and bigger lies daring the media to fact check him, and threatening and accusing them of bias when they do. Of course, is Donald Trump really unprecedented in his approach to lying? Or, did he have inspiration?

Here is Donald Trump in The Art of the Deal on "exaggeration":

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.

I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.

Adolf Hitler in his memoir Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

1. tRump's propagandist lies make Hitler look like an amateur.

[bettyellen]

2. Ivana said Mein Kampfh was a favorite read of his....

[Tactical Peek]

3. There is an account of his interest in Hitler's speeches.

Last edited Fri Sep 23, 2016, 02:59 AM - Edit history (1)

from Vanity Fair in 1990:

Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke.

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.

“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.”)

Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner

[Jerry442]

4. “If I had these speeches...I would never read them.”

Actually, we should all read Hitler's speeches. That way we'd recognize them instantly when we hear them from a wannabe.

[TexasProgresive]

5. That's been in the r'Puke tool box for quite some time

While he wasn't the first I remember bUSH 43 saying on May 24, 2005 in Rochester, NY, "See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

[Fozzledick]

6. Deplorable minds think alike.

[Johnny2X2X]

7. Trump admires Hitler

Keeps a book of Hitler speeches next to his bed.

This is an actual fact acknowledged by Trump.