(Adnkronos) – Donald Trump “falls under the definition of a fascist”, admires dictators and when he was at the White House complained that he did not have loyal generals like Hitler’s. The word of John Kelly, the retired general who was first Secretary of Homeland Security and then White House chief of staff for Trump. “Certainly the former president is far-right, he is certainly an authoritarian, he admires people who are dictators, he said it himself, so he certainly falls under the definition of a fascist,” Kelly said in an interview with the New York Times.
In the interview with the Times, Kelly confirmed that Trump spoke in positive terms of Hitler “more than once, he said Hitler had done positive things.” And in another interview, with The Atlantic, the military was even more precise, recounting an exchange he had with Trump during his time at the White House.
“Why can’t you be like the German generals?”, the tycoon asked him, with Kelly replying “you mean Bismarck’s generals?”, knowing full well that “he didn’t know who he was or about the Franco-Prussian war”.
“Do you mean the Kaiser’s generals? – Kelly pressed on – certainly not Hitler’s.” “Yes, yes, Hitler’s generals,” replies Trump, with his then chief of staff having to explain to him that Erwin Rommel committed suicide after participating in a plot against Hitler. In the interview, Kelly explains that Trump didn’t even seem to know who Rommel was.
Kelly’s history lesson did not dissuade Trump who, according to The Atlantic article, continued to insist in private conversations that “he needed the kind of generals Hitler had, people totally loyal to him, who followed orders.”
The reconstruction was denied by Trump’s campaign: “it’s absolutely false, President Trump never said such a thing, he spent his life honoring our military heroes”, is the reply to the campaign advisor, Alex Pfeiffer .
