The class act known as Jesse Ventura continues. After suing the widow of murdered veteran Chris Kyle and securing a judgment awarding him $1.8 million, the C-lister and former governor of Minnesota has begun to take credit for the success of Kyle’s American Sniper. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on the comments made after a hearing to consider a new trial:
Ventura bristled when he was asked by a reporter what he thought of the argument that “unjust enrichment” should not apply in defamation cases.
“Excuse me, the book made $40 million. As soon as they defamed me, the presale of this book was 4,000. When [Chris] Kyle went on TV that day [two days after the book was published], it jumped 100,000 in one day,” Ventura said. “Put it in this context: When you shoot a rocket to outer space, there has to be a booster rocket on it to get it into space. … I was the booster rocket in this book that propelled it to No. 1.”
There you go. Jesse Ventura, and not anything Chris Kyle did, was the reason American Sniper was a best-seller. Oddly, none of the books Ventura has written were remotely as successful as Kyle’s. But he’s somehow the reason Kyle’s book was successful. Sounds legit.
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