Kamala Harris has denounced Donald Trump as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and a military personally loyal to him after allegations emerged about the former president’s repeatedly voiced admiration for Hitler.
On Wednesday, the vice-president gave a surprise speech from her Washington DC residence, doing so in the aftermath of reports that John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, recalled how Trump lamented not having generals who swore loyalty to him in the same manner as military commanders served Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in,” Harris said.
Harris said that the remarks relayed by Kelly showed that Trump “does not want a military that is loyal to the United States constitution”.
“He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the constitution of the United States,” she said.
Posing the question as a stark choice for US voters going to the polls for the presidential election on 5 November, she added: “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be: What do the American people want?”
Harris’s address came after she had spent more than a week highlighting Trump’s earlier branding of his political opponents as “the enemy within” and demands for the military to be deployed against those who cause election “chaos”.
In on-the-record taped conversations with the New York Times, Kelly – who was White House chief of staff for 18 months during Trump’s presidency – said his former boss repeatedly praised Hitler, even when contradicted, and fitted the dictionary definition of a fascist.
“He commented more than once that: ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” said Kelly, who also said that Trump would rule as a dictator if elected again.
Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, made similar remarks in an interview with the Atlantic.
Referencing the various reporting, Harris said: “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. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best.”
She added: “It is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, ‘certainly falls into the general definition of fascists’, who, in fact, vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”
It was the second time in a week that Harris had, in effect, labelled the Republican nominee a fascist. Last week, she answered affirmatively when a Detroit radio interviewer asked whether Trump’s vision amounted to fascism – although she did not utter the word directly.
Trump’s spokesperson has denied Kelly’s claims that Trump said this, calling it “absolutely false”.
Harris’s remarks on Wednesday were the clearest sign yet that she had changed tactics from a previous approach initially adopted after becoming her party’s nominee, when she and her surrogates attempted to play down and belittle Trump – in one example, by mocking his obsession with crowd sizes at his rallies.
Theories abound as to what Harris could do to turn voters away from Trump’s appeal, which has centered on vows to lower prices that rose during Joe Biden’s presidency and throw immigrants out of the country.
In an interview earlier today on CNN, the noted Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that the very sort of message Harris pushed this afternoon was not working.
“What’s interesting is that [when] Harris focused on why she should be elected president, that’s when the numbers grew,” Luntz said.
“And then the moment that she turned anti-Trump and focused onto him and said, don’t vote for me, vote against him, that’s when everything froze.”
Kelly’s characterisation of Trump as a fascist echoes that of Gen Mark Milley, the retired former chair of the armed services joint chiefs of staff. Milley, whom Trump has said should be executed, is quoted by the journalist Bob Woodward in a recently published book as calling Trump “a total fascist” and “fascist to the core”.
Later on Wednesday, it was reported that Harris told NBC News that she was preparing for the possibility that Donald Trump will declare victory before the election is complete, saying: “We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that.”
Also, at the White House daily media briefing, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, acknowledged that Biden agreed with those who say Trump is a fascist.
“I mean, yes,” Jean-Pierre replied, when a reporter put the question to her in the White House briefing room. She went on to argue that Trump himself has made no secret of how he would like to govern, saying: “The former president has said he is going to be a dictator on day one. We cannot ignore that … we cannot ignore or forget what happened on January 6, 2021.”
Cecilia Nowell contributed reporting
