US Vice President Kamala Harris has said she believes Donald Trump "is a fascist" after his longest-serving chief of staff said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office.
Former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, made the comments about his former boss in interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic which were published on Tuesday warning the Republican nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office he suggested that the Nazi leader "did some good things."
Speaking at a CNN town hall on Wednesday, Ms Harris said the comments offer a window into who the former president "really is" and the kind of commander in chief he would be.
Asked if she believed that Trump is a fascist, Ms Harris replied twice, "Yes, I do." Later, she brought it up herself, saying Trump would, if elected again, be "a president who admires dictators and is a fascist."
The Democratic presidential nominee said Mr Kelly's comments, made less than two weeks before voters will decide whether to return Trump to the Oval Office, were a "911 call to the American people" by the former chief of staff.
"I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America," she said.
She said the American people deserve a president who maintains "certain standards," which include "certainly not comparing oneself, in a clearly admiring way, to Hitler."
She added that if re-elected, Trump would no longer be tempered by people who would "restrain him" from his worst impulses.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ms Harris repeated her increasingly dire warnings about Trump's mental fitness and his intentions for the presidency.
"This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who have worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room," she told reporters outside the vice president's residence in Washington.
The comments from Mr Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, built on past warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final two weeks.
Mr Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat "suckers" and "losers."
His new warnings emerged as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers "enemies from within."
"He commented more than once that, 'You know, Hitler did some good things, too,"' Kelly told The New York Times. Mr Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying "nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good," but Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.
He also claimed Trump met the definition of a fascist. After reading the definition aloud, including that fascism was "a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader," Mr Kelly concluded Trump "certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.
"He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government," Mr Kelly told the Times.
In his interview with The Atlantic, Mr Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing "German generals”.
Mr Kelly would ask if he meant "Bismarck's generals," referring to Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor who oversaw the unification of Germany. "Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals," Mr Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president allegedly responded, "Yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals."
Trump said on his Truth Social media platform that Mr Kelly had "made up a story" and went on to heap insults on his former chief of staff, including that Mr Kelly's "toughness morphed into weakness."
Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the Race from Crooked Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind. She is a Threat…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2024
Trump's campaign also denied the accounts. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Mr Kelly had "beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated" and, after Ms Harris' statement, accused the Democratic candidate of sharing "outright lies and falsehoods."
Chris Sununu, New Hampshire's Republican governor and onetime Trump critic, said Mr Kelly's comments did not change his plans to vote for the former president.
"Look, we've heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump. It's really par for the course," the governor told CNN. "Unfortunately, with a guy like that, it's kind of baked into the vote at this point."
Ms Harris said on Wednesday that Trump admired Hitler's generals because he "does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution, he wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a military who will be loyal to him personally."
Polls show the race is tight in swing states, and both Trump and Ms Harris are criss-crossing the country making their final pitches to the sliver of undecided voters. Ms Harris' campaign has spent considerable time reaching out to independent voters, using the support of longtime Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney and comments like Mr Kelly's to urge past Trump voters to reject his candidacy in November.
Before serving as Trump's chief of staff, Mr Kelly worked as the former president's secretary of homeland security, where he oversaw Trump's attempts to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.
Mr Kelly was also at the forefront of the administration's crackdown in immigration policy that led to the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and their children along the southern border. Those actions made him a villain to many on the left, including Harris.
He is not the first former top Trump administration official to cast the former president as a threat.
Retired Army General Mark A. Milley, who served as Trump's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told US journalist Bob Woodward in his recent book War that Trump was "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person to this country." Retired General Jim Mattis, who worked as secretary of defence under Trump, reportedly later told Woodward that he agreed with Gen Milley's assessment.
