I don't know that he studied mass influencing techniques. He is a bona fide sociopath who can smell a victim and work him. It's probably a DNA thing. As for the Jim Jones parallel, there is no question. He is already going scorched earth, the only question is how close to the edge he will be allowed to go. There are funny clowns and there are dangerous clowns. Trump is not a funny clown.
I am sure he did do a little reading. He will have heard the likes of Roy Cohn who as much as he was a son of a bitch he was educated, quote il Duche more than Jefferson. Trump never dies anything very original, he copies the themes of other men, his attempts to take on the mantel of Barron Hilton obvious but he will go with whatever works. I'm more expecting to see a buy1sell2 try and get Biden with a suicide vest more than a Jim Jones mass suicide. Shake the crazy cage long enough.. Once he is banned from Twitter and on Parler things will get more intense.
Seriously, I doubt he reads anything. He may have held books in his hand, but I'd bet a dollar that's pretty much as far as it went. As for Cohn, Trump didn't have to read about him; Roy Cohn was both Trump's mentor and lawyer.
Sorry the post was truncated, fixed. Its in court filings from Ivana he had the speeches of Hitler next to his bed stand. When asked about this he instead assumed the question was about Mein Kampf and his comment was a jewish friend gave it to him. He took and built on. Its what he had always done and what men of his level do. Hitler was a student of Napoleon.
"In his first and only visit to Paris, Hitler made Napoleon’s tomb among the sites to see. “That was the greatest and finest moment of my life,” he said upon leaving." Through history you will find an unbroken line of admiring the last couple of guys I'm very sure. The Barron Hilton stuff is different but quite revealing in itself.
I heard about that book on his nightstand. He may have aspired to it. He may have fondled it, and someone may have told him the gist of it. But his own ghostwriter said he wasn't able to focus for more than a moment at a time, if that. So while I have no doubt that he revered the book, I don't think its pages saw much daylight.
I think if he is interested he can read, certainly when younger. A friend who was a professor in Harvard said she thought Trump had an IQ of about 120 at his best when young which puts him at the bottom of the billionaire league who average around 130. On that scale 130 is 1 in 50, or top 2 percent. Of course his mind is horribly lopsided with all the dodgy neurological wiring. Napoleon of course drew from Charlemagne.
I doubt it. Based on what? His old man had to get him into Wharton, someone else took his SAT, and he threatened to sue the school if they released his transcripts. He then went on to blow his old man's money, deal after deal. 120? Not that it is anywhere near exceptional, but I don't think so. I think he's closer to the bare minimum three digit mark. Remember, he may think he's smart, but he also thinks he's good-looking.
She has over 20 years experience on tbe campus and lives next to Harvard. His reach far far exceeds his grasp but he has his disposable minions to do the grasping like most narcissists of his kind. Wharton was not what is is not as far as exclusivity, I was tested around 130 when in highschool, I was below average in my class as my school streamed by ability, literally A, B, C, D named classes on each year. Three school itself had an entrance exam. He has to have something up there to even do what he did with his father's fortune. But he is all instinct and asshole now.