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Donald Trump’s favorite movie is Citizen Kane, the 1941 film about a publishing tycoon mogul who surrounds himself with material luxury but struggles to find happiness. “I loved Orson Welles,” Trump told Bloomberg’s Timothy O’Brien. “He was totally fucked up. He was a total mess. But think of his wives. Think of his hits. He was like this great genius that after 26, never did it. He became totally impossible. He thought everybody was a moron, everybody was this, everybody was that; if he had a budget he’d exceed it by 20 times and destroy everything. He became impossible. I loved that.”
In fact, Trump was such a big fan of the movie that he filmed a short video about it, directed by famed documentarian Errol Morris. “Citizen Kane was really about accumulation. At the end of the accumulation, you see what happens, and it’s not necessarily all positive,” Trump says, in what is fair to describe as an understatement. As he describes the film, Trump comes close to doing something unusual—he engages in self-reflection. “Perhaps I can understand that—the relationship that he had was not a good one for him,” the thrice-married Trump says of Kane’s declining relationship with his wife. He adds that “in real life, I believe that wealth does isolate you from others; it’s a protective mechanism.”
He muses briefly about Kane’s famous last word, “Rosebud.” “A lot of people don’t really understand the significance of it. I’m not sure if anyone really understands the significance,” Trump says, before remarking on the effectiveness of the word as a symbol. “Perhaps if they came up with another word that meant the same thing, it wouldn’t have worked,” he says. “But Rosebud works.”
At the end of the video, Morris asks him a question: “If you could give Charles Foster Kane advice, what would you say to him?”
Trump doesn’t have to think about it. “Get yourself a different woman,” he says.
Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:
- Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
- Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
- Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
- Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
- Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
- Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
- Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
- Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
- Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
- Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
- Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
- Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
- Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
- Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
- Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
- Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
- Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
- Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
- Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
- Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
- Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
- Trump Files #23: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
- Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
- Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
- Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
- Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
- Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
- Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
- Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
- Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
- Trump Files #32: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
- Trump Files #33: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
- Trump Files #34: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
- Trump Files #35: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
- Trump Files #36: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
- Trump Files #37: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
- Trump Files #38: When Democrats Courted Donald
- Trump Files #39: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
- Trump Files #40: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
- Trump Files #41: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
- Trump Files #42: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
- Trump Files #43: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
- Trump Files #44: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
- Trump Files #45: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
- Trump Files #46: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
- Trump Files #47: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
- Trump Files #48: Witness Donald’s Epic Insult Fight With the Mayor of New York