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Political themes

Laura Mulvey explored the anti-fascist themes of Citizen Kane in her 1992 monograph for the British Film Institute. The News on the March newsreel presents Kane keeping company with Hitler and other dictators while he smugly assures the public that there will be no war. She wrote that the film reflects "the battle between intervention and isolationism" then being waged in the United States; the film was released six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, while President Franklin D. Roosevelt was laboring to win public opinion for entering World War II. "In the rhetoric of Citizen Kane," Mulvey writes, "the destiny of isolationism is realised in metaphor: in Kane's own fate, dying wealthy and lonely, surrounded by the detritus of European culture and history."

Journalist Ignacio Ramonet has cited the film as an early example of mass media manipulation of public opinion and the power that media conglomerates have on influencing the democratic process. He believes that this early example of a media mogul influencing politics is outdated and that today "there are media groups with the power of a thousand Citizen Kanes." Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is sometimes labeled as a latter-day Citizen Kane.

Comparisons have also been made between the career and character of Donald Trump and Charles Foster Kane. Citizen Kane is reported to be one of Trump's favorite films, and his biographer Tim O'Brien has said that Trump is fascinated by and identifies with Kane. In an interview with filmmaker Errol Morris, Trump explained his own interpretation of the film's themes, saying "You learn in 'Kane' maybe wealth isn't everything, because he had the wealth but he didn't have the happiness. In real life I believe that wealth does in fact isolate you from other people. It's a protective mechanism — you have your guard up much more so if you didn't have wealth...Perhaps I can understand that."