Former President Donald Trump repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and other dictators while in office, ex-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly says in a new interview in which he calls the GOP presidential candidate an authoritarian who fits the “general definition of a fascist.”
Kelly went on the record with an audiotaped recollection of Trump’s remarks that the Nazi dictator did some positive things for Germany, the New York Times reported late Tuesday.
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly said of Trump, who “certainly” aimed to rule the U.S. as a strongman like the dictators he admires.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that,” Kelly said. “So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
The former Marine four-star general said he tried to explain that Hitler was a blood-thirsty antisemitic dictator who killed millions of innocents, but the protests fell on deaf ears.
Kelly, who was Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, had been reluctant to openly criticize Trump and had previously declined to be taped making the explosive comments.
In the new interview, he also says Trump praised so-called “German generals” to highlight his own complaints that the U.S. military is not permitted to take political sides.
“Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?” Kelly said he asked the former president. Trump responded: “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”
Kelly had already said he considers Trump to be a danger to democracy and that he won’t vote for him, but he has declined to endorse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The majority of Trump’s former cabinet members have said they won’t vote to return him to the Oval Office.
Ex-Vice President Mike Pence says he cannot support Trump due to the former president’s effort to overturn their loss in the 2020 election. That scheme culminated with the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, during which Trump supporters built a makeshift gallows with a noose and chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”