Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/11/trumps-former-advisers-say-he-praised-hitler-and-other-dictators-in-private.html
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pretty sure he’s praised Hitler and other dictators in public too
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Based on his response, I’m assuming Cheung admires Goebbels.
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Yes, and he did so before even getting elected. Nobody (including Kelly or Bolton) can claim that he didn’t show us exactly who he was before gaining power.
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That book that he has, but doesn’t have, and wouldn’t read if he did.
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It’s telling that both Trump and Biden describe Putin as a “killer”. For Biden, it’s why we should spend funds and unite the world to stop him, for Trump it’s the reason he admires him, and his personal aspiration.
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This is like saying “he cured his athlete’s foot by cutting off his foot.”
Hitler spent Germany deep into debt rebuilding the army, employment went down to nothing because the unemployed were forced into the army, and at that point there was nothing left to do but invade and loot the rest of Europe. Great economic plan. /s
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I still like how George Will put it, re: Trump’s devotion to Putin, et al. “Trump has a weak man’s banal fascination with strong men whose disdain for him is evidently unimaginable to him.”
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There’s a difference between being tough and being a bully; between being strong and being brutal. Trump admires and aspires to the latter and has no real concept of the former.
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Yeah Bolton can kick rocks. He fell out with Trumpton because he wasn’t going to kill millions in Iran. He knew all about him and then stamped away in a hissy fit.
To be fair on Trump though, extravagant praise for Mussolini was the norm for tiny wingers who considered themselves intellectuals. Von Mises said that he saved western civilisation and Churchill’s letters to him are embarrassing.
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The positive things those guys said about Mussolini in the 1920s have certainly not aged well, but that kind of admiration for Il Duce mostly went out of style among polite society even before WW2 started.
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Based on his response, I would have thought Cheung admired a five year old schoolyard bully.
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He probably has a copy of “Mein Kampf” but I highly doubt he has the patience or understanding to read it. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when he released a picture book about his time in office whereas previous Presidents have released autobiographies.
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mostly. Mussolini went and lost. Franco was never as cool with the right but they stuck by him despite his unfashionability.
Mussolini has always been somewhat acceptable. He’s never quite gone out of style in Italy and his early loss of ecstatic favour among the right wing intellectual elite was somewhat akin to Von Mises reasons for disavowing Hitler. It wasn’t his economics or politics in general he had a problem with, it was the Anschluss. Churchill’s problem with Hitler similarly wasn’t his fascism so much as his Germnanness. He admired his success but worried that success would be at the expense of England.
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I watched an episode of the series about John Gotti on Netflix this weekend, and I was thinking the whole time that Trump would have gravitated to him in a heartbeat.
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I might be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the “didn’t read it” part because as far as I can tell he hasn’t even read his own autobiography. Trump’s ghostwriter has said he doesn’t believe Trump has read all the way through any book in his entire adult life.
Maybe he just liked keeping a book of Hitler speeches nearby as a talisman of power, like many Christians do with the Bibles they never actually bothered to read. (Obviously that wouldn’t make it any better than if he had read it.)
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It’s this bit, for me.
Viciousness being something to aspire to.
Well, yeah, that’s him all over.
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A picture book published to swipe the opportunity of Shealah Craighead, his presidential photographer, from publishing a photo book using her public domain photos, as previous WH photographers have done. Published by a company owned by Don Jr. and a political hack. Not just a grandiose illiterate, but a grifter, first and foremost.
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I doubt he’s read Mein Kampf, but he probably made the effort for My New Order, the collection of speeches. (He’d read those out loud, after all.)
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