By Tim Reid, Stephanie Kelly and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump meets the definition of a fascist and “prefers the dictator approach to government,” his former White House chief of staff said in a series of interviews with the New York Times.
With less than two weeks until the Nov. 5 election, John Kelly, a longtime critic of Trump’s, told the Times that the former Republican president had no understanding of the U.S. Constitution or the concept of the rule of law.
Kelly said the former president would seek to rule like an authoritarian if he returned to the White House. In the interviews published on Tuesday, he quoted Trump as having told him German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”
Trump’s team has denied the accounts.
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,” Kelly said, according to the newspaper. “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.”
A retired U.S. Marine Corps general, Kelly served as Trump’s White House chief of staff between 2017 and 2019. Since Kelly left the White House the two men’s relationship has soured and both are open about their disdain for each other.
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that Kelly “has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, said on Wednesday that the reported remarks were troubling.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” she told reporters outside her official residence.
“In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guard rails against his (Trump’s) propensities and his actions,” Harris said on Wednesday.
Kelly has made critical comments about Trump in previous interviews. He is not privy to internal discussions inside Trump’s orbit and so cannot speak with certainty about how Trump will govern.
Harris has seized on comments Trump made during a Fox News event in December when he said that if he won the 2024 election he would be a dictator, but only on “Day One,” to close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling.
Harris and fellow Democrats argue that Trump is a threat to U.S. democracy, something Trump denies and has said is true of the Democratic candidate.
Retired U.S. Army brigadier general, Republican Steve Anderson, said on a call with reporters organized by the Harris campaign that he was disappointed Kelly did not go as far as endorsing Harris after his criticism of Trump.
In the Times interview, Kelly stressed that as a former military officer he was not endorsing any candidate.
(Reporting by Tim Reid and Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Trevor Hunnicutt and Howard Goller)
