Donald Trump 'kept book of Adolf Hitler's speeches in his bedside cabinet'

Donald Trump reportedly owned a copy of Adolf Hitler’s speeches and kept them in his bedside cabinet.

A 1990 Vanity Fair article about billionaire businessman stated that Mr Trump’s then wife Ivana, said her husband owned a copy of “My New Order” – a printed collection of the Nazi leader’s speeches.

Marie Brenner, the article’s author, wrote: “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.”

Asked by Ms Brenner about the claim and whether his cousin, John Walter, had given him the book, Mr Trump responded: “Who told you that?"

He went on to explain that it was "his friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.”

Mr Davis told Vanity Fair: “I did give him a book about Hitler. 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.”

Mr Trump, however, denied he would ever read speeches given by Hitler, saying: “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them."

Ms Brenner suggested the businessman, who was suffering difficulties with his business at the time, may have been looking for inspiration in Hitler's "genius for propaganda" and the way he spun military defeats as great victories.

The article also claimed that John Walter would frequently greet his cousin by saying: “Heil Hitler”.