WASHINGTON (AP) – Kamala Harris said Wednesday that Donald Trump’s comments praising Adolf Hitler that he reportedly made to his longest-serving chief of staff do not reflect the former president’s “true self” and who he is. He said that this will provide clues as to whether he will become the kind of supreme commander he is.
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In an interview with The New York Times and The Atlantic published Tuesday, John Kerry said the Republican candidate met the definition of a fascist and implied that the Nazi leader “did some good” while in office. I warned you.
Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee, repeated increasingly dire warnings about Trump’s mental state and intentions for the presidency.
Read more: President Trump says Hitler ‘did good things’, claims former chief of staff Kelly wanted a general like the Nazis
“This is a very clear picture of what kind of person Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who have worked with him in the Oval Office and the Situation Room,” Harris told reporters outside the Vice President’s Office. It’s a window into what’s going on.” In Washington.
Kelly, a former Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, made his comments as the election enters its final two weeks, building on previous warnings from former Trump officials. It was something.
Kelly has been a longtime critic of Trump, previously criticizing him for calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.” As President Trump seeks re-election for a second term, he vows to dramatically expand the use of the military domestically and threatens to use force against Americans he deems “enemies from within.” , his new warning has surfaced.
“He commented over and over again, ‘Hitler did good things, too,'” Kelly recalled to the Times. Mr. Kelly usually ends the conversation by saying, “(Hitler’s) inaction was a good thing, although you may disagree,” but Mr. Trump sometimes brings up the topic again. Yes, he said.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Kelly said that when Trump broached the idea of needing a “German general,” he was referring to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who oversaw the unification of Germany. He recalled that he was asking if he was referring to something like that. “You’re not talking about Hitler’s generals, are you?” Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president replied, “Yes, yes, Hitler’s generals.”
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The Trump campaign denied this account. Campaign spokesman Stephen Chan said Kelly had “exaggerated himself by telling a story that debunked these lies that he made up,” and in response to Harris’ remarks, the Democratic candidate accused of sharing “blatant lies and falsehoods”.
Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire and a former Trump critic, said Kelly’s comments would not change his plans to vote for the former president.
“Look, we’ve heard a lot of radical things from Donald Trump about Donald Trump. It’s really no surprise,” the governor told CNN. “Unfortunately, those players are factoring into the vote to some extent at this point.”
Some supporters of the former president in battleground states responded to Kelly’s comments with a shrug.
“Trump has had four years and we’ve been on a roll. Kelly has nothing good to say about Trump. He should get his ass kicked,” said the longtime Nevada veteran. said Jim Littner, a Vietnam Army veteran and co-founder of the nonprofit Veterans Transition Resource Center.
Harris said Wednesday that President Trump praises Hitler’s generals because “he doesn’t want an army that’s loyal to the Constitution of the United States; he wants an army that’s loyal to him.” He wants an army that is personally loyal to him. ”
Polls show close races in battleground states, and Trump and Harris are crisscrossing the country, making final pitches to the small number of undecided voters. Harris’ campaign is leveraging the support of longtime Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney and comments like Kelly’s to urge those who voted for President Trump in the past to reject his candidacy in November. , has spent considerable time reaching out to independent voters.
Harris’ campaign held a call with reporters on Tuesday to amplify the voices of retired military officials and emphasize that many of the officials who worked with Trump are now opposed to the Trump campaign.
WATCH: White House says it agrees with John Kerry calling President Trump a ‘fascist’
“The people who know him best are the ones most opposed to him and his presidency,” said the retired Army brigadier general. General Steve Anderson.
Anderson said he hopes Kelly will fully support Harris over Trump, but he hasn’t done so yet. But Kevin Carroll, a retired Army Reserve colonel and former senior adviser to Mr. Kelly, said Wednesday that Mr. Trump’s former top official “would rather chew on broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.” spoke.
Before becoming Trump’s chief of staff, Kelly served as the former president’s secretary of homeland security, overseeing the president’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Mr. Kelly also spearheaded his administration’s crackdown on immigration policies that led to the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and children along the southern border. These actions made him a villain to many on the left, including Harris.
Harris was running for president in 2019 after Kelly left the Trump administration and joined the board of directors of the company that runs the nation’s largest detention facility for unaccompanied immigrant children. He wrote that he was the “architect of the administration’s cruel child separation policy.” Now he will benefit from the separation of the family. That’s unethical. We are better than this. ”
During a June 2019 trip to Miami for the primary debate, Harris was one of more than a dozen Democratic presidential candidates who visited a detention center south of the city to protest the administration’s harsh treatment of young immigrants. there were.
In an interview with the Times, Kelly also said that Trump meets the definition of a fascist. After reading out the definition that fascism is “a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by an autocratic leader,” Kelly said that President Trump “follows the general definition of a fascist.” This is definitely the case,” he concluded.
Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump is often furious at any attempt to limit his power and “wants to be” a dictator.
“He certainly likes a dictator’s approach to government,” Kelly told the Times. I added it later. “I guess he wants to be like he is in business: You tell people to do something, they do it, and they don’t care too much about whether it’s legal or not. It was.”
Kelly is not the first former Trump administration official to view the former president as a threat.
Retired Army General Mark A. Milley, who served as President Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bob Woodward in his recent book, War, that President Trump was a “deep-rooted fascist” and “the most dangerous man in this country.” He’s a great person,” he said. Retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who served 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 has benefited from support from veterans.
About 6 in 10 veterans said they voted for Trump in 2020, according to an AP VoteCast poll, as did just over half of those with a veteran in their family. Nearly two-thirds of voters in this year’s South Carolina Republican primary were veterans or people from veteran households, the former South Carolina governor who is Trump’s toughest opponent in the 2024 Republican primary. People voted for Trump over Nikki Haley, an Associated Press VoteCast survey found.
Associated Press writers Lynley Sanders in Washington, Ken Ritter in Las Vegas and Adriana Gomez Ricon in Miami contributed to this report.
