John Kelly, the retired Marine general who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, told The New York Times that the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
The newspaper reported on Tuesday that in a recorded interview, Kelly was asked whether the former U.S. 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.”
The comments from a top Trump White House official come two weeks before Election Day, as Trump faces U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris in his bid to return to the Oval Office four years after losing an election he falsely maintained was riddled with fraud.
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.”
Kelly and other former Trump aides have issued repeated warnings about how Trump views the presidency and how he would exercise power if returned to office.
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.
Kelly pointed to Trump’s comments at rallies and in interviews in recent weeks warning about the “enemy within” and floating the prospect of using the military against political opponents.
“Even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it,” Kelly said.
Kelly also told the newspaper that Trump had at times spoken positively about Adolf Hitler.
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly said.
