Alan: My best friend, SJ, interacts socially with a doctor who has provided healthcare services to the Trump family for decades.
In addition to corroborating reports of sex-and-drug orgies, this doctor says - and I quote - "Trump doesn't know anything. And he doesn't want to know anything."
Originally Answered: Has Donald John Trump ever been known to read?
He’s not much of a reader, no.
As explained in the Washington Post based on a series of interviews, according to Trump, “He does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense.’”[1]
So there, he already knows most things and has common sense.
As explained in the Washington Post based on a series of interviews, according to Trump, “He does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense.’”[1]
So there, he already knows most things and has common sense.
He mostly likes to read things about himself. This has been true for many years, not just since entering politics. That being said, national security staff have learned that in order to get him to read a memo or intelligence brief, they need to not just keep them very short and picture heavy (especially maps), which he specifically requested[2], but to mention his name as often as possible.[3]
“National Security Council officials have strategically included Trump's name in ‘as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he's mentioned.’” [4]
His first wife told Vanity Fair he kept a book of Hitler speeches next to his bed.
Before you dismiss this as a liberal smear or chalk it up to the fury of a woman scorned (he not only cheated on her but publicly humiliated her), understand that he confirmed this:
…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.”)[5]
I’m in no way saying this makes him Hitler (although much could be said about parallels with his political tactics, his coziness with white supremacists, and his relationships with and admiration for other dictators[6]). If someone reads Mao or Marx, that in and of itself wouldn’t mean a thing.
Trump is also reportedly a longtime fan of a book called The Power of Positive Thinking, which was written by a self-help guru and Trump family minister who performed the ceremony at his first wedding[7][8].
He was asked what he was reading during the campaign and usually said he didn’t have time, although at times he gave various answers, including The Bible, a book about Andrew Jackson, a polemical about Hillary Clinton, and “a book that I've read before, it's one of my favorite books, All Quiet on the Western Front, which is one of the greatest books of all time," though one writer suspected that answer was one he was “suddenly remembering from high school.”[9]
So long story short, no, he’s not much of a reader.
At campaign stops, especially those before overtly Christian audiences, he often liked to say the two best books in the history of the world were The Bible and his (ghost written) book, The Art of the Deal[10], though I’m not sure if he’s read either of them.
Footnotes
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