Trump claims he’s never read Mein Kampf as he repeats anti-immigrant rhetoric

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 321 points – Trump claims he’s never read Mein Kampf as he repeats anti-immigrant rhetoric
independent.co.uk

Donald Trump has now denied ever having read Adolf Hitler’s 1925 memoir-manifesto Mein Kampf as he faces a firestorm over his recent run of anti-immigrant comments, which have been likened to the Nazi leader’s infamous “blood and soil” rhetoric.

The former president returned to the campaign trail in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday evening where he doubled down on his earlier inflammatory remarks.

“It’s crazy, what’s going on. They’re ruining our country. And it’s true. They are destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They are destroying our country,” he said.

“They don’t like it when I said that,” he added, before denying browsing Hitler’s book.

“And I never read Mein Kampf. They said, ‘Oh, Hitler said that’. In a much different way,” he said.

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Because it was actually a book of Hitler's speeches that he loved to read.

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

Additionally, Trump wanted US military generals to emulate generals of the third Reich and treat him like he was Hitler:

It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
“Which generals?” Kelly asked.
“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.
But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals

Then there's this:

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.

Trump seems to aspire to be Hitler-like, and he even tried to take supreme dictatorial power through populism, lies and propaganda like Hitler did.

I am more shocked by the fact that that motherfucker reads books at all.

The fact that he reads so little yet keeps this book close to his bed is telling.