In preparation for their White House visits, both Japanese and German officials studied the infamous feature for clues into the president’s thinking on world affairs.
To understand the thinking of American presidents, historians, contemporaries, and political rivals, have often sought out the texts that most influenced them. George Washington, for example, was known to love Cato: A Tragedy , Joseph Addison’s civics-heavy play about the man who tried and failed to block Caesar’s path to tyranny. He loved the play so much that he forced demoralized troops at Valley Forge to view a staging of it. Calvin Coolidge was apparently so enamored of Cicero that he nearly became fluent in Latin after regularly reading him. Herbert Hoover, who grew up poor and became insanely wealthy , was, unsurprisingly, a big fan of Dickens’ David Copperfield. to view a staging of it nearly became fluent in Latin became insanely wealthy
For President Donald Trump, one such Rosetta stone seems to be Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. But another key text is an interview he himself gave to Playboy magazine in 1990, when he was but a mere real-estate mogul and New York institution. The interview, at turns eerie and prophetic, runs through his typically immodest self-assessment and catalogues his political philosophies, while offering a scathing appraisal of America, which he saw (and still sees) as “weak” and “pushed around” by the rest of the world. In the interview, he also unfurls a blueprint for his hypothetical presidency, years before winning the White House. The Power of Positive Thinking interview
In recent months, at least two world leaders have shared the interview with their staffs in advance of their first meetings with the president. According to The Wall Street Journal , Japanese officials revisited it ahead of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit last month; German Chancellor Angela Merkel also studied it before arriving in the United States this week, several sources say. revisited it several sources
Beyond the standard self-aggrandizement and hagiography of Trump’s own business deals, what makes the Playboy interview instructive reading for foreign eyes is how, with greater depth than many of his campaign soundbites, the future president prioritizes America’s trade partnerships. In response to a question about the first thing a hypothetical President Trump would do, Trump says, “Many things.
