“Trump was quoted in 1990 as saying he had been given a copy of Mein Kampf by a friend — though it turned out he was mistaken about which of Hitler’s books had been given to him.
In their September 1990 issue, Vanity Fair ran a lengthy, unflattering profile of Trump written by Marie Brenner. The subject of Hitler came up in a decidedly strange passage about his alleged ownership of a book containing the Nazi dictator’s speeches called My New Order:
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.”
To recap, Trump’s then-wife Ivana (from whom he was separated) told people he owned a book of Hitler’s speeches and read from it occasionally; Trump said he was given a copy of Mein Kampf by a Jewish friend (who, in fact, was not Jewish and said the book was My New Order); then Trump refused to acknowledge whether he owned the book and said that if he did, he would never read it.
In a subsequent television interview with Barbara Walters, Trump did acknowledge receiving a copy of My New Order, though he appeared to bristle at the implication that he admired Hitler’s speeches:
WALTERS: In the current issue of Vanity Fair, the author, Marie Brenner, says that you read from Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, and that these are speeches that you seem to admire. What’s your reaction? Do you have this book? Do you have these speeches?
TRUMP: It is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. A friend of mine sent me a book. A man who I think is Jewish, although I don’t know, sent me a book. It happened to be that book. All of a sudden Marie Brenner somehow found out that he had sent me a book. It is the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen, and I’m probably going to sue Vanity Fair over it.
Trump later called the Vanity Fair article “one of the worst ever written about me.” In an infamous coda to the episode, Trump walked up behind Brenner at a public event and poured a glass of wine down her back (an incident both Trump and Brenner acknowledged happening).”
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