Donald Trump kept book of Hitler speeches on his nightstand, ex-wife claims

GOP presidential hopeful and real estate billionaire Donald Trump has been under scrutiny for his troubling views on race. Now, Business Insider has dug up a 1990 interview with his former wife, Ivana, in which she says Trump kept a book of Hitler speeches near his bed.

"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," according to the 1990 story.

Trump, who is of German ancestry, told Vanity Fair at the time that his friend, "who is Jewish" gave him the book. His friend confirmed that he did, but clarified that he is not in fact Jewish. Trump later tried to backpedal and say that if he had the speeches, he would never read them.

Trump announced his run for presidency with overtly racist descriptions of Mexican migrants as drug runners and rapists. He has discussed building a giant wall at the U.S.-Mexico border with a "big beautiful door" in it.

His racially-charged attacks on people aren't new. In 1989, Trump took out full-page ads in four New York newspapers calling for reinstatement of the death penalty for the five young boys -- four black and one Latino -- who were convicted in the infamous Central Park jogger case.

The case took on racial overtones, with the boys called the "wolf pack" and accused of "wilding' by authorities -- a term invented to refer to running amok causing damage and harm.

The five accused were later cleared of all wrongdoing after serving their full sentences. Even then, Trump took to the New York Daily News in an op-ed slamming the city of New York for settling a lawsuit with them for $40 million.

This week, Trump insulted Jorge Ramos, a Mexican-American journalist. Ramos tried to ask Trump a question about his vow to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. when Trump interrupted him, telling him to sit down and go back to Univision.