Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”
The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews published in The New York Times and The Atlantic.
In his interview with the Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing “German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant “Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor who oversaw the unification of Germany. “Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump.
To which the former president responded, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”
They build on past warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final two weeks.
Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.
” His new warnings emerged as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers “enemies from within.”
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,'” Kelly recalled to the Times.
Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying “nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good,” but that Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.
Trump’s campaign denied the accounts Tuesday, with campaign spokesman Steven Cheung saying that Kelly had “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated.”
Anderson said he wished Kelly would fully back Harris over Trump, something he has yet to do. But retired Army reserve Col. Kevin Carroll, a former senior counselor to Kelly, said Wednesday that the former top Trump official would “rather chew broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.”
Before serving as Trump’s chief of staff, Kelly worked as the former president’s secretary of homeland security, where he oversaw Trump’s attempts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kelly was also at the forefront of the Trump administration’s crackdown in immigration policy that led to the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and their children along the southern border. Those actions made him a villain to many on the left, including Harris.
Kelly is not the first former top Trump administration official to cast the former president as a threat.
