While Donald Trump’s reported praise for Adolf Hitler may alarm some Americans, to his followers and Republican allies, it’s just another day that ends in “y” — yet another example of his political opponents attacking him unfairly.
“That’s ridiculous. They make up lies,” said Vicki Casto, a retiree from Flovilla, Georgia, as she waited to hear the former president speak at a town hall focused on faith about an hour south of Atlanta. “Anything they’re saying kind of turns around to be what they’re doing.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” added Linda Ailstock, a retired nurse from Ellerslie, Georgia. “He’s a mean person, but I don’t think that he would do that. I don’t think he would do the things that Democrats are doing.”
Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, said this week that his former boss meets the definition of a fascist, recalling that Trump praised Hitler and asked why his generals couldn’t be more like the Nazi generals who had served the dictator.
Mark Milley, the former Army general and Trump’s handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also warned that Trump is “fascist to the core.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in next month’s election, has spoken of Trump’s autocratic behaviour and language since she moved to the top of the ticket in July following President Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign. On Wednesday, she cited Kelly’s words as additional evidence.
“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,” she said in brief remarks to reporters.
But at Fox News, the pro-Trump network that generally avoids negative stories about the former president, morning host Brian Kilmeade defended Trump just as his rallygoers had. He argued that Trump, coming from a background of being the absolute authority while running his own business, was likely frustrated with appointees who did not do exactly what he wanted.
“I can absolutely see him go: Now, it’d be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,” Kilmeade said on Wednesday morning, just hours after Kelly’s comments about his former boss’ autocratic tendencies were published in separate accounts in The Atlantic and The New York Times. “Maybe not fully being cognisant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever.”
Republican elected officials, who over nine years have honed a defence of Trump as someone whose alarming pronouncements should not be taken literally, largely fell back on that approach again.
Even New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who during the Republican primary was eager to attack Trump as he supported rival Nikki Haley for the nomination, said that while he respected Kelly, the general’s statements and warning about Trump would not keep him from supporting the Republican nominee and ultimately would not matter to voters, either.
“You’re going to get salacious things said and all that,” Sununu told CNN. “We’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump. It’s kind of par for the course. It’s really, unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s kind of baked into the vote, at this point.”
Former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, who broke with her Republican Party after Trump’s January 6, 2021, coup attempt and is now supporting Harris, tried to shame her former colleagues. “If your response to General John Kelly, gold star father and Trump’s WH chief of staff, confirming that Trump praised Hitler and called members of our military ‘suckers and losers’ is to defend Trump, you need to look in the mirror and realise your dishonour will live forever,” she wrote in a social media post.
At Trump’s town hall on Tuesday, hosted inside one of the churches in the town of 1,500, attendees said they believed that he would prevail in November because God was on his side. But they downplayed the stark warnings from former Trump aides about the former president’s character and fitness for office.
“It’s always funny how someone who fights for freedom of speech gets called a fascist,” Daniel Padron, an engineer from nearby Fayetteville, told HuffPost. “Like, you call someone who’s doing the opposite of fascism, a fascist?”
“[We are] people who are trying to look for more freedoms instead of more rules and regulations and laws, like I mean, being in Georgia, one of our biggest things here is: Leave us alone,” he added. “Let us live our life. We don’t need government to ruin that for us.”
Karla Harrington, a Peachtree City resident who is originally from El Salvador, said that people have made up their minds about Trump and that warnings about his character would not work, even from those who worked for him in his administration.
“You either love him or you hate him, and you don’t have to love someone to support the fact that they’re a good business owner, right?” she said.
“I mean, I think everybody does business with people they don’t necessarily like, but they like what they do, right? They do their job well. So I think that’s something that people should look past,” she added.