Trump believes Hitler did a lot of good according to new book

During a visit to Europe to mark 100 years since the end of the first world war it is reported that Donald Trump turned to his then chief of staff, John Kelly and uttered the inexplicable words; “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

This remark is said to have stunned Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps General, and is being reported in a new book by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal.

The book, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election” is being heavily advertised ahead of its publication next week.

According to Bender the then president Trump made the remark during a quick history lesson during which Kelly had to “[remind] the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and had to “connect the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities”.

Bender is one of a number of authors who has been able to interview Trump since he lost his second election to Joe Biden.

In a statement issued in response to this allegation a Trump spokesperson said: “This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made-up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.” This sounds a little familiar if truth be told.

Bender however claims that unnamed sources have reported that Kelly; “told the president that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred”, apparently the president continued to emphasize the German economic recovery that occured under Hitler during the 1930s.

“Kelly pushed back again,” Bender writes, “and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.”

Bender adds that Kelly had to tell Trump that even if that economic claim was true; “you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can’t.” I feel this is just common knowledge to most people.

This international trip saw Trump run into more trouble than normal. He controversially cancelled a trip to an American cemetery and is reported to have called US soldier who died in the war “suckers” and “losers”.

Advertisements

Kelly, who lost his own son in Afghanistan in 2010, left the White House team in 2019 and has spoken critically of the former president ever since, even calling him; “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life”.

Bender reports that Kelly tried his best to educate Trump and overcome his “stunning disregard for history”.

“Senior officials described his understanding of slavery, Jim Crow, or the Black experience in general post-civil war as vague to non-existent,” he writes. “But Trump’s indifference to Black history was similar to his disregard for the history of any race, religion or creed.”

During Trump’s presidency concern over the countries far right movement grew drastically. This concern continues as even in defeat Trump maintains a tight grip over the Republican party. He continues to make positive remarks about far-right and white-supremacist groups.

Michael Wolff’s new book details Trump’s confusion during Capital attack

On the 6th of January 2021 Donald Trump told his supporters that he would march on the US Capitol with them in an attempt to overturn the election results. He promptly abandoned them after a terse exchange with his chief of staff, this is according to the first excerpt from Michael Wolff’s third Trump White House book, entitled Landslide.

The extract has been exclusively published by New York magazine.

The journalists first book on Trump, Fire and Fury, exploded onto bookshelves in January 2018 and created a new genre of scandalous political books. While his first book did very well however his sequel, Siege, did not meet expectations.

On January 6th this year, while Congress met to confirm Biden’s election win, Trump spoke to his supporters and told them: “We’re going to walk down [to the Capitol to protest] – and I’ll be there with you.”

According to the excerpt Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was approached by concerned secret service agents but said: “No. There’s no way we are going to the Capitol.”

Wolff writes that when the president was approached by Meadows he seemed unsure of what his chief of staff was talking about.

“You said you were going to march with them to the Capitol,” Meadows reportedly said. “How would we do that? We can’t organize that. We can’t.”

“I didn’t mean it literally,” Trump then replied.

The former president is also reported to have been puzzled when his supports began a riot that led to five people losing their lives.

Wolff also claims that Trump was confused and disappointed by: “who these people were with their low-rent ‘trailer camp’ bearing and their ‘get-ups’, once joking that he should have invested in a chain of tattoo parlors and shaking his head about ‘the great unwashed’.”

Advertisements

Trump and his close family would watch the attack unfold on TV at the White House.

According to Wolff the exchange between the president and his chief of staff shed’s light on how Trump abandoned his most fervent supporters.

As Wolff reports the White House quickly came to the realisation that Mike Pence had “concluded that he was not able to reject votes unilaterally or, in effect, to do anything else, beyond playing his ceremonial role, that the president might want him to do”.

Trump’s aid Jason Miller is then reported as saying, “oh shit” before turning to the president’s lawyer and election fraud cheerleader, Rudy Giuliani.

The writer reports that the former New York mayor was: “drinking heavily and in a constant state of excitation, often almost incoherent in his agitation and mania”.

Image via AP News

As the attempted insurrection escalated Trump posted a tweet attacking his vice-president and continued to ignore the numerous aids who were pleading with him to ask his supporters to stand down.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and advisor is reported to have seen the attack as nothing more than an optics issue. Wolff states that it took an hour for Trump to make the: “transition from seeing the mob as people protesting the election – defending him so he would defend them – to seeing them as ‘not our people’”.

Trump the reportedly asked Meadows: “How bad is this? This looks terrible. This is really bad. Who are these people? These aren’t our people, these idiots with these outfits. They look like Democrats.”

He then added: “We didn’t tell people to do something like this. We told people to be peaceful. I even said ‘peaceful’ and ‘patriotic’ in my speech!”

Landslide is slated for release on July 27th.

Book by Donald Trump’s niece has sold almost 1m copies on its first day

The hotly anticipated family tell-all book by Mary Trump, the US president’s niece, has managed to sell close to a million copies by the end of its first day alone.

Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, was published on Tuesday and had sold around 950,000 copies by the end of the first day. That figure includes pre-orders, ebooks and audiobook versions of the text.

That figure is a new record for the books publisher Simon & Schuster.

The book talks about describes Fred Trump, father to Donald Trump and Fred Jr – Mary’s father – as a high-functioning sociopathic bully who punished any shre of kindness or empathy to be found in his children, including in the current president.

Despite Fred Trump Jr being the elder brother it was Donald Trump who took over the family property business. Fred Trump Jr eventually developed an alcohol addiction and passed away when Mary was just a child.

A temporary restraining order on Mary Trump was lifted earlier this week allowing her to finally undertake numerous interviews about her book, and more importantly its focal character.

In an interview with the Washington Post she describes the president as “clearly racist”, though that appears to be a trait throughout her wider family with an inherent “knee-jerk anti-Semitism, a knee-jerk racism,” common amongst the Trump clan.

“Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the n-word or use anti-Semitic expressions,” she told the Post.

During an interview with Rachel Maddow Trump was asked if she had ever heard the president himself use racist language. “Of course I did. And I don’t think that should surprise anybody, given how virulently racist he is today.”

Mary Trump even went so far as to call for the president to resign during an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America. She said he was mentally incapable of performing the duties of his office effectively.

She also disclosed that Maryann Trump Barry, the presidents older sister agreed with her on his inability to do the job. “She very emphatically did not believe it would happen or think it should, because he was a man without principle and no one would vote for him. She was horrified by the white evangelical embrace because she knew he had no deep convictions about religion one way or the other and considered going to church a photo op.”

In her acknowledgements the presidents niece thanks her aunt “for all of the enlightening information”.