Harris says Trump 'is a fascist' after John Kelly says he wanted
generals like Hitler's
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[October 24, 2024]
By DAN MERICA
ASTON, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that she
believes that Donald Trump "is a fascist” after his longest-serving
chief of staff said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in
office and put personal loyalty above 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 warning that the
Republican nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in
office he suggested that the Nazi leader “did some good things.”
Speaking at a CNN town hall, Harris said they offer a window into who
the former president “really is” and the kind of commander in chief he
would be.
When asked if she believed that Trump is a fascist, Harris replied
twice, “Yes, I do.” Later, she brought it up herself, saying Trump
would, if elected again, be “a president who admires dictators and is a
fascist.”
The Democratic presidential nominee said Kelly's comments, less than two
weeks before voters will decide whether to send Trump back to the Oval
Office, were a “911 call to the American people” by the former chief of
staff. They were quickly seized by Harris as part of her closing message
to voters as she works to sharpen the choice at the ballot box for
Americans.
“I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of
the United States of America," she said, saying the American people
deserve a president who maintains “certain standards," which include
“certainly not comparing oneself, in a clearly admiring way, to Hitler.”
She added that if reelected, Trump would no longer be tempered by people
who would “restrain him” from his worst impulses.
Earlier Wednesday, Harris repeated her increasingly dire warnings about
Trump’s mental fitness and his intentions for the presidency.
“This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who
know him best, from the people who have worked with him side by side in
the Oval Office and in the Situation Room,” Harris told reporters
outside the vice president's residence in Washington.
The comments from Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump
in the White House from 2017 to 2019, built 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 Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.
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.”
Trump said on his Truth Social media platform that Kelly had “made up a
story” and went on to heap insults on his former chief of staff,
including that Kelly's “toughness morphed into weakness.”
Trump’s campaign also denied the accounts. Campaign spokesman Steven
Cheung said Kelly had “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he
has fabricated" and, after Harris' statement, accused the Democratic
candidate of sharing "outright lies and falsehoods.”
Chris Sununu, New Hampshire's Republican governor and onetime Trump
critic, said Kelly's comments did not change his plans to vote for the
former president.
“Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from
Donald Trump. It's really par for the course,” the governor told CNN.
“Unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s kind of baked into the vote
at this point.”
Some of the former president's supporters in swing states responded to
Kelly's comments with a shrug.
“Trump did his four years, and we were in great shape. Kelly didn’t have
anything good to say about Trump. He ought to have his butt kicked,"
said Jim Lytner, a longtime advocate for veterans in Nevada who served
in the Army in Vietnam and co-founded the nonprofit Veterans Transition
Resource Center.
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Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks
during a CNN town hall in Aston, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP
Photo/Matt Rourke)
Harris said Wednesday that Trump admired Hitler's generals because
he “does not want a military that is loyal to the United States
Constitution, he wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a
military who will be loyal to him personally.”
Polls show the race is tight in swing states, and both Trump and
Harris are crisscrossing the country making their final pitches to
the sliver of undecided voters. Harris' campaign has spent
considerable time reaching out to independent voters, using the
support of longtime Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney and
comments like Kelly's to urge past Trump voters to reject his
candidacy in November.
Harris’ campaign held a call with reporters Tuesday to elevate the
voices of retired military officials who highlighted how many of the
officials who worked with Trump now oppose his campaign.
“People that know him best are most opposed to him, his presidency,”
said retired Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson.
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 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.
After Kelly left the Trump administration and joined the board of a
company operating the nation's largest detention center for
unaccompanied migrant children, Harris wrote during her 2019 run for
president that he was “the architect” of the administration’s "cruel
child separation policy. Now he will profit off the separation of
families. It’s unethical. We are better than this.”
When she was in Miami for a primary debate in June 2019, Harris was
also one of a dozen Democratic presidential candidates who visited
the detention center south of the city and protested against the
administration’s harsh treatment of young migrants.
In his interview with the Times, Kelly also said Trump met the
definition of a fascist. After reading the definition aloud,
including that fascism was “a far-right authoritarian,
ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a
dictatorial leader,” Kelly concluded Trump “certainly falls into the
general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly added that Trump often fumed at any attempt to constrain his
power, and that “he would love to be” a dictator.
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,” Kelly
told the Times, adding later, “I think he’d love to be just like he
was in business — he could tell people to do things and they would
do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the
legalities were and whatnot.”
Kelly is not the first former top Trump administration official to
cast the former president as a threat.
Retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as Trump’s chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bob Woodward in his recent book
“War” that Trump was “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous
person to this country.” And retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who worked as
secretary of defense under Trump, reportedly later told Woodward
that he agreed with Milley’s assessment.
Throughout Trump's political rise, the businessman-turned-politician
benefited from the support of military veterans.
AP VoteCast found that about 6 in 10 military veterans said they
voted for Trump in 2020, as did just over half of those with a
veteran in the household. Among voters in this year’s South Carolina
Republican primary, AP VoteCast found that close to two-thirds of
military veterans and people in veteran households voted for Trump
over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump's toughest
opponent in the 2024 Republican primary.
___
Associated Press writers Linley Sanders in Washington, Ken Ritter in
Las Vegas, Zeke Miller in Aston, Pennsylvania, and Adriana Gomez
Licon in Miami contributed to this report.
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