In 2021, Donald Trump’s spokesperson denied that the Republican former president had ever made positive comments about Adolf Hitler. More than three years later, those denials are increasingly difficult to believe. A new report from The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg included:
Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this.
As was the case three years ago, a Trump spokesperson told The Atlantic that the quote is “absolutely false,” adding that the former president “never said this.”
That said, retired Gen. John Kelly — Trump’s former Homeland Security secretary and former White House chief of staff — went on the record with Goldberg. From the report:
Kelly told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’
Kelly went on to also tell Goldberg, again on the record, that the former president “used the terms suckers and losers to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country. There are many, many people who have heard him say these things.”
If recent history is any guide, the GOP candidate will almost certainly lash out wildly at the man who served at his right hand for much of his presidency — he has already publicly referred to the retired general as “dumb” and “a Lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth” — though Kelly has been eager to talk about this and related issues for a while.
For CNN reporter Jim Sciutto’s book “The Return of Great Powers,” Kelly told Sciutto that Trump privately said that Hitler “did some good things.” For Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s book “The Divider,” the retired general said that Trump wanted Kelly and his colleagues to be more like “the German generals.”
When Kelly asked Trump for clarification, the then-president reportedly replied by specifying: “The German generals in World War II.”
It now appears that the former White House chief of staff is adding even greater clarity to his experiences at Trump’s side.
This is, of course, the same Kelly who said, after working closely with Trump, that the Republican is guilty of “poisoning” people’s minds, having “serious character issues” and not being “a real man.”
Kelly has also said that Trump has “no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about” and has “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” What’s more, Kelly told The New York Times in 2022 that Trump, during his presidency, told his chief of staff to use the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department to target his critics and perceived political foes. The Times’ report went on to note that “Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted.” The then-president “regularly” made the demands anyway. With two weeks remaining ahead of Election Day 2024, it appears the retired general isn’t quite done shedding light on what he knows about his former boss’s perspective. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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