I have to give Donald Trump credit for keeping this ball rolling for as long as he has. I can't speak to whether he reads Hitler's speeches at night, but the concept of the "Big Lie" seems alive and well in his multi-cycled career: say something outrageous enough times and people will believe it because nobody could be so shameless.
There's a sort of natural surface connection between Trump and Charles Foster Kane — massive wealth, glitter and glitz, natural salesmanship, tremendous ego, and now a presidential run. But Trump appears to be much more charismatic (in an overwhelming way) than Kane ever turned out out to be, even as he likely leaves less behind him, in the end, than Kane's Xanadu.
There will be a lasting movie about Trump yet, just you wait. He's far too delicious a character.
7 Takeaways from Vanity Fair’s 1990 Profile of Donald Trump
V.F. writer-at-large Marie Brenner’s investigation of Trump reveals he hasn’t changed much in 25 years.
