The President of the United States read a document comparing him favorably to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and his official response was 'Sounds good to me!' This actually happened. On a Friday morning. From the official presidential account.
The Post Heard Round the World (And Somehow Not Louder)
According to The Guardian, Trump reposted a short text in the early hours of Friday morning that listed, by name, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin. The author's thesis: the 'overwhelming difference' between all of these people and Donald Trump is that Trump has more global reach. Trump's reply, verbatim: 'Sounds good to me!'
Let that sentence sit for a moment. The leader of the free world was handed a document that places him in a murderers' row of humanity's worst monsters, told the point of comparison was raw power, and responded with two thumbs up and an exclamation mark. Most people, if compared to Hitler, would at minimum say 'I see what you're going for but perhaps let's workshop this.' Not Trump. Trump liked it.
The 'Historian' in Question Is a Scottish Soccer Guy
Here is where the story becomes a perfect little gem of absurdity. Trump credited the document to 'presidential historian Dave King.' CNN reported Friday that King is not, in fact, a historian of any kind. He is a Scottish-born businessman who previously chaired Rangers Football Club in Glasgow. His qualifications to assess global power structures are, to put it charitably, adjacent to the subject matter.
Trump apparently met King when King was caddying for legendary golfer Gary Player at a Florida event held in Trump's honor. Somewhere between the back nine and the clubhouse, a retired soccer chairman handed the President of the United States a two-page document comparing him to Stalin, and the president has apparently been clutching it ever since like a golden ticket.
CNN reports that Trump actually first brandished this document during a March interview with New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for their forthcoming book, Regime Change. He called for aides to bring it to him mid-interview. He then read aloud from it. These are real events that occurred in the Oval Office of the United States of America.
The Book Has More, Because of Course It Does
Haberman and Swan's Regime Change is based on over 1,000 interviews conducted across three years, and according to both The Guardian and CNN, it contains enough material to keep therapists busy for a decade. During the same interview where Trump unveiled the dictator comparison document, he reportedly reflected on his legal battles by saying: 'Essentially I won every fucking time. And I'm tired of winning and winning and winning and just getting bad fucking press.'
On Jerome Powell, the former Federal Reserve chair Trump couldn't legally fire, Trump reportedly told a meeting: 'I want to bust his fucking balls, honestly. What about that fucking building? Can we stop construction. I just want to bust his fucking balls. Fuck him.' This is a sitting president's recorded remarks in an official White House meeting. About construction costs. The man who runs the largest economy on earth decided to wage psychological warfare on the Fed chair over a renovation project.
The book also reportedly catches Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, walking into the Oval Office to find Trump 'clutching a tube of superglue and attempting to affix gold decorations to the marble fireplace mantel.' Which is not about policy. But it is deeply clarifying as a portrait.
The Ukraine Comment, Which Also Happened
Per The Guardian's review of Regime Change, Trump reportedly told a high-level Oval Office meeting that 'I'm not a big fan of Ukraine... except their women. They keep winning Miss Universe.' This was said, reportedly, in a serious policy discussion about a country currently fighting a war for its survival.
The book also reveals Trump considered making Ron DeSantis his Secretary of Defense, which he apparently pitched to a 'startled ally' with the rationale: 'We need plot twists.' The man governing the country approaches cabinet appointments the way a network executive approaches a flagging drama series.
This Didn't Come Out of Nowhere
The Guardian correctly frames Trump's Hitler-Mao-Stalin enthusiasm within a longer pattern. Trump has spent years expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin, praising Kim Jong-un for his grip on power, and describing authoritarian leaders in terms that would make any previous American president's head explode. The 'Sounds good to me!' post is not an anomaly. It is the logical endpoint of a trajectory that has been visible since at least 2015.
What's new here is the specificity. This isn't Trump vaguely praising 'strength.' This is Trump explicitly endorsing a document that names Hitler and Stalin and says the main difference between them and him is that he's more powerful. He read it. He agreed with it. He posted it publicly. There is no interpretation required.
The Dingo Take
There is a version of political media coverage where this story runs under a cautious headline like 'Trump Post Draws Criticism' and spends four paragraphs explaining that historians have 'raised concerns.' We are not writing that story. The president of the United States compared himself to history's most prolific mass murderers, was told he was more powerful than all of them, and said 'Sounds good to me.' The source was a man he met on a golf course who used to run a Scottish soccer club. This is not a complicated story requiring nuanced framing.
The defense will come, as it always does. It was a joke. It was taken out of context. The media is obsessed. And look, maybe Trump thought it was flattering in some breezy, unthinking way and didn't sit down to really work through the implications of endorsing a Hitler comparison. That's actually the charitable read. The less charitable read is that he understood exactly what the document said, agreed with the framing, and hit repost. Given that this man once described Hannibal Lecter as 'a wonderful man,' the charitable read may be giving too much credit.
What none of this is, under any framing, is normal. Comparing yourself favorably to genocidal dictators isn't a bold rhetorical move or a trolling of the libs or a misunderstood bit of hyperbole. It is disqualifying. The fact that it no longer automatically disqualifies anyone from anything in American politics is the real story here, and it is one we have been living inside for a decade now.
