John Kelly, the retired Marine general who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, entered the 2024 fray in stunning fashion in a series of interviews published Tuesday, saying the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals.
Kelly’s comments, two weeks from Election Day, are the latest in a line of warnings from former Trump White House aides about how he views the presidency and would exercise power if returned to office.
In addition to the fascist comments, Kelly — who was Trump’s chief of staff from 2017 to 2019 — told The New York Times that the former president “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
He also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment.
“‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly told The Atlantic he’d asked Trump. He added, “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.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.”
Trump’s campaign denied the exchange. “This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this,” campaign adviser Alex Pfeiffer said.
But Democrats quickly seized on the comments. Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said Tuesday night at a rally in Wisconsin that the reported comments about Hitler’s generals “makes me sick as hell.”
“Folks, the guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness — a former president of the United States and the candidate for president of the United States says he wants generals like Adolf Hitler had,” said Walz, who served in the Army National Guard.
‘Enemy within’
Kelly’s comments come in the closing days of Trump’s race against Harris, as he seeks to return to the Oval Office four years after losing an election he has falsely maintained was riddled with fraud.
Trump has mused in recent speeches and interviews about turning the US military on political rivals he has referred to as the “enemy within” — comments that Harris has pointed to as evidence that the former president is “unhinged” and poses a danger to democratic values.
“This is a democracy,” she told Fox News last week. “And in a democracy, the president of the United States – in the United States of America – should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”
The Times reported Kelly criticized Trump’s “enemy within” comments, saying that “even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.”
The newspaper reported that in a recorded interview, Kelly was asked whether the former president met the definition of a fascist and responded by reading aloud a definition he’d found online.
“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” Kelly said. “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”
Kelly continued: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly told the Times that Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
“I think he’d love to be just like he was in business — he could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot,” he said.
He also said Trump didn’t understand the Constitution or the values on which the nation was built, and that it “was a new concept for him” that top government officials’ loyalty was to the Constitution, not the president personally.
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement that Kelly had “totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated because he failed to serve his President well while working as Chief of Staff and currently suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Praising Hitler’s generals
Kelly also told The Times that Trump had praised Hitler.
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly said.
Kelly’s comments to the newspaper were published the same day The Atlantic reported that Trump had praised Hitler’s generals for their loyalty.
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said during a private conversation at the White House when he was president, The Atlantic reported. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday night that Trump’s admiration of Hitler was perhaps the “most shocking” thing Kelly heard in the White House.
“Remember, Donald Trump, throughout his presidency, was frustrated by the generals — or ‘my generals,’ as he called them … because they wouldn’t sort of mindlessly listen to him or follow his orders,” Goldberg said.
American military officers, such as generals, swear an oath to the Constitution and not the commander in chief.
Trump has reportedly made similar comments about Hitler and his generals.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto previously reported in his book “The Return of Great Powers” that Trump allegedly praised Hitler saying, “Hitler did some good things,” according to Kelly.
“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly recounted to Sciutto. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”
“It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater,” Kelly told Sciutto. “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing.”
A book published in 2022 also reported Trump told Kelly, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” The comments by Trump when he was president were reported in “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.
Kelly confirmed the exchange with Trump to The Atlantic.
The article lays out a series of stories that The Atlantic uses to illustrate Trump’s views on the military and his desires for how it should perform under his command. In addition to recounting the former president’s musings on the loyalty of Nazi generals, The Atlantic also reported Trump was furious when told how much the funeral for a fallen servicemember cost after he had volunteered to pay for it.
The Atlantic reported that that Trump told the family of Fort Hood Pfc. Vanessa Guillen, who was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in the armory room where she worked, that he would pay for the funeral costs but never did.
When he received the $60,000 bill, the Atlantic reported – citing two people present at the meeting and the notes of someone at the meeting – Trump said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f–king Mexican!”
Trump told his then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and directed him not to pay the funeral bill. Later in the day, Trump reportedly said, “F–king people, trying to rip me off.”
“President Donald Trump never said that. This is an outrageous lie from the Atlantic two weeks before the election,” Pfeiffer said.
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect what Kelly told The New York Times.
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.