WASHINGTON — Less than two weeks before the presidential election, Kamala Harris called Donald Trump’s alleged longing for the type of general who deferred to Adolf Hitler “deeply troubling.”
In brief remarks Wednesday, Harris opined on The Atlantic’s interviews with former Trump administration staffers, in which they said that he longed for “the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The article and its fallout are the latest episode in an electoral season that has focused intensely on which candidate poses the greater threat to democracy in general, and to Jews in particular.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Harris in remarks she delivered in front of the vice president’s residence. “All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.”
Trump’s campaign categorically denied The Atlantic’s reporting and blamed Harris for encouraging Trump’s assassination. Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, said Harris “continues to peddle outright lies and falsehoods that are easily disproven. The fact is that Kamala’s dangerous rhetoric is directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump and she continues to stoke the flames of violence all in the name of politics.”
John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, went on the record this week with The Atlantic and The New York Times to describe multiple conversations in which Trump sought to circumvent the Constitution and expressed admiration for autocrats. Kelly told The New York Times that he believes the term “fascist” befits Trump.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that,” he said. “So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Harris cited Kelly’s remarks to call Trump “increasingly unhinged and unstable.” She added that “in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guard rails against his propensity and his actions,”
Trump’s comments on Hitler’s generals had been reported previously, but Kelly had not publicly confirmed hearing the remarks until now. It isn’t the first time Trump or his campaign have denied an affinity for Hitler. Last year, the former president accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase echoing language Hitler used. At a campaign rally, he denied he was inspired by Hitler.
As the election closes in, the Harris campaign is focusing increasingly on casting Trump as a threat to democracy. The campaign had a conference call earlier Wednesday with two retired military officers, both Republicans, who denounced Trump for the reported remarks. Trump likewise has cast Harris as a threat to democracy, based on evidence-free claims that Democrats are rigging elections as well as the litany of court cases against him, which he has said are politically motivated.
There has similarly been an intense focus on which nominee poses the greatest threat to Jews. The Harris campaign this summer said Trump “denigrates American Jews” and “traffics in antisemitic tropes.” Trump has predicted imminent doom for Israel if Harris is elected and has decried Jews who vote for Democrats, saying that the party doesn’t like Jews and “hates” Israel.
The Trump campaign and its allies have derided Kelly as disgruntled. Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the Trump White House, called Kelly’s interviews “a personal vendetta from a staffer who failed at his job” and said Trump is an ally to Jews.
“I worked for John Kelly and don’t believe him,” she tweeted. “His last ditch effort to stop Donald Trump is desperate. President Trump loves America, will preserve our freedoms, and has done more for the Jewish people than any other president.”
There was also an effort to cast the reported remarks as reasonable. On Fox News, anchor Brian Kilmeade said Trump was justifiably frustrated by aides who refused to carry out orders they deemed illegal.
Kilmeade said, “I can absolutely see him go, ‘It’d be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever.”
The author of the Atlantic article, editor Jeffrey Goldberg, said Kelly told him this week that he had instructed Trump about that third rail. “I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Goldberg reported.
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