US Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that she believes Donald Trump “is a fascist,” a day after the former president’s former chief of staff said that the former Republican president praised Adolf Hitler during his presidency and put personal loyalty above of the Constitution.
Harris seized on comments by former chief of staff John Kelly — a retired Marine Corps general — about his former boss in interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic published Tuesday, in which he warned that the Republican candidate meets the definition of a fascist and that, when he was in office, he suggested that the leader of Nazi Germany “did some good things.”
During a town hall hosted by , Harris noted that these comments offer a glimpse into “who the real” Donald Trump is and the kind of commander in chief he would be.
When asked if she believes Trump is a fascist, the Democratic presidential candidate twice responded, “Yes, I do.” Later she was even clearer in her statements, saying that if Trump returns to the White House he would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
The vice president noted that Kelly’s comments, with less than two weeks left before voters decide whether to send Trump back to the White House, were “an emergency call to the American people.”
“I think Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America,” he said, adding that the American people deserve a president who maintains “certain standards,” which “without a doubt” include “not to compare oneself, clearly in the form of admiration, with Hitler.”
He added that, if re-elected, Trump could no longer be restrained from following his worst impulses.
Hours earlier, the Democrat reiterated her increasingly dire warnings about Trump’s mental fitness and his intentions for the presidency.
“This is a look at who Donald Trump really is, from the point of view of the people who know him best, from the people who have worked closely with him in the Oval Office and in the Crisis Room,” Harris said. to reporters outside the vice president’s residence in Washington.
The remarks from Kelly, who worked with Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, added to earlier warnings made by former senior Trump officials as the election campaigns enter their final two weeks.
Kelly has long been a critic of Trump, previously accusing him of calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.” His new warnings emerged as Trump seeks a second term with a promise to dramatically expand the use of military forces in the country and after he hinted that he would use force to go after Americans he considers “enemies from within.” .
Kelly told the New York Times that Trump “commented on more than one occasion that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things too.’” He added that he usually silenced the conversation by saying “that nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good,” but that Trump would occasionally bring it up again.
In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing “German generals,” Kelly asked him if he meant “Bismarck’s generals,” alluding to Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor who oversaw the unification of Germany. . “Surely you’re not referring to Hitler’s generals,” Kelly said he asked Trump. To which the former president responded: “Yes, yes, Hitler’s generals.”
Trump said on his Truth Social social network that Kelly “had made up a story” and hurled a series of insults toward his former chief of staff, including that Kelly’s tenacity “had turned into weakness.”
Trump’s campaign team also refuted the accounts. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Kelly had “been made a fool of by these debunked stories he has fabricated.” Following Harris’ statements, Cheung accused the Democratic presidential candidate of sharing “blatant lies and falsehoods.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, once a Trump critic, said Kelly’s comments do not change his plans to vote for the former president.
“Look, we’ve heard a lot of crazy things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump. “It’s actually the norm,” the governor told .
Some of the former president’s supporters in swing states responded to Kelly’s comments with indifference.
“Trump served his four years and we were very good. Kelly didn’t have anything good to say about Trump,” said Jim Lytner, a veterans advocate in Nevada who served in the Army in Vietnam and co-founded the nonprofit Veterans Transition Resource Center.
Harris said Wednesday that Trump admired Hitler’s generals because “he doesn’t want a military that is loyal to the Constitution of the United States, he wants a military that is loyal to him.” “He wants an army that is loyal to him personally.”
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