Harris Slams Trump for Fantasizing About Running America Like Nazi Germany

Vice President Kamala Harris has responded to new statements from former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly detailing Donald Trump’s fascist ambitions. 

In a televised address delivered from the vice president’s residence, Harris told reporters that it’s clear her Republican opponent “wants a military that is loyal to him,” one that “will be loyal to him personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law.” 

“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable,” Harris said. “In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions.” 

“We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be what do the American people want?” the vice president added. 

On Tuesday, Kelly told The New  York Times that the former president embodies the definition of a fascist. “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,” Kelly said, adding that Trump “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

In a separate interview given to The Atlantic, Kelly went on the record with additional details regarding his past assertions that Trump once told him he needed loyal generals like “the German generals in World War II.” Kelly told the publication that when he had attempted to clarify with Trump exactly what German generals he was referring to, the former president explicitly stated he wanted “Hitler’s generals.” 

Two additional sources told The Atlantic that the former president once said he wanted “the kind of generals that Hitler had,” as in “people who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” 

Trump has made no secret of his autocratic ambitions, vowing to act as a “dictator for a day,” heaping praise on authoritarians, accusing migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” vowing mass arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, and threatening to use the military on American citizens to root out the “enemy from within.” 

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Despite the clear picture Trump is painting for voters about his plans for the nation, his words don’t seem to actively be swaying voters against him. Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, told CNN on Wednesday that at this point, Trump praising Hitler is no big deal.

“We’ve heard a lot of extreme things from Donald Trump. With a guy like that, it’s kinda baked into the vote,” he said.