Moringa And The “H—– Speeches” August 27, 2015August 26, 2015 MEET MORINGA . . . “The African superfood that’s healthier than kale” — 25 times the iron of spinach, 15 times the potassium of bananas, 9 times the protein of yogurt, vitamins, antioxidants, an appetite suppressor — grows like crazy, requires little water, good for the African women and others beginning to grow and harvest it . . . well, read up. I already have the tea; planning to make some salad. And now . . . POLITICS Here’s a little more about the Donald’s possible reading habits, including the excerpt from Marie Brenner’s 1990 piece in Vanity Fair: Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, 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.”) Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.” This is not, of course, how the Donald — or anyone running for president– should be judged. I own not one but two sets of Henry Ford’s The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, one of them signed. (I collect so-called historic documents.) The criteria upon which we choose the world’s next leader, it seems to me, should be mainly policy-based, competence-based, and temperament-based. But given the Donald’s extraordinary ability to excite crowds . . . to intimidate and belittle people . . . to portray America as the victim abused by Mexico and China who will make our nation great again . . . all that . . . you do wonder whether he ever became curious enough to see how Hitler was democratically elected to have . . . say . . . cracked open Marty Davis’s gift, as his ex-wife claimed. Here is RNC Chair Reince Priebus on the Donald in 30 seconds: “a net positive for everybody.” And here’s a minute on Jeb. Partisan though I am — and it’s really important to be partisan these days, given how different the visions of the two parties are — I cringe along with most of you at the tone of the discourse. Political ads make zero attempt to be fair or balanced. (E.g., this archive of presidential campaign commercials, 1952-2008.) But I guess that, to a certain extent, that’s just the way it works. Mitch McConnell says that “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country,” Thomas Jefferson’s people accused President Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman,” Martha Washington told a clergyman that Jefferson was “one of the most detestable of mankind.” I don’t like it, or all the money in politics (what a nightmare that is, in no small part thanks to the Justices the two Bushes appointed who gave us Citizens United and McCutcheon), but I’d like a President Trump or a President Bush even less.