WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday put Donald Trump’s praise for Adolf Hitler, according to his own onetime chief of staff, front and center into the 2024 presidential race.
“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,” Harris said in remarks to reporters, just hours after John Kelly went public with his account.
“We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power,” she added.
Kelly, a former Marine and the longest-serving chief of staff during Trump’s four-year term, gave interviews to The Atlantic magazine and The New York Times, which both published his remarks late Tuesday.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.
Kelly, who previously confirmed that Trump had called service members who die defending America and its allies “suckers” and “losers,” told The Atlantic that Trump on multiple occasions had expressed his admiration for Hitler and especially for having military leaders loyal to him personally. He told the Times that Trump clearly was a “fascist,” as that word is defined.
Harris spoke for just 3 1/2 minutes in a newly scheduled appearance in front of her official residence at the Naval Observatory. She repeated earlier warnings about Trump’s autocratic tendencies, but this time buttressed them with words from Kelly.
“Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired four-star general, confirmed that while Donald Trump was president, he said he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had,” Harris said. “Donald Trump said that 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, 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.”
Harris then cited Trump’s repeated claims that the United States is more threatened by “the enemy within” than by foreign adversaries. He has defined that “enemy” as his political opponents and said he would use the U.S. military to go after them — if need be.
“Let’s be clear about who he considers to be the enemy from within,” Harris said. “Anyone who refuses to bend a knee or dares to criticize him would qualify, in his mind, as the enemy within, like judges, like journalists, like nonpartisan election officials.”
Harris closed by reminding voters that in a second term, people like Kelly, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, former Joint Chiefs chairman Mark Milley and even former Vice President Mike Pence would not be there to check Trump’s worst instincts, as they had while he was previously in the White House.
“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,” she said.