Photo Credit: AP Photo/ Matt Rourke
Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that she believes that Donald Trump “is a fascist” after his longest-serving chief of staff said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office and put personal loyalty above the Constitution.
Harris seized on comments by former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, about his former boss in interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic published Tuesday warning that 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, Harris said they offer a window into who the former president “really is” and the kind of commander in chief he would be.
When asked if she believed that Trump is a fascist, 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 Kelly’s comments, less than two weeks before voters will decide whether to send Trump back to the Oval Office, were a “911 call to the American people” by the former chief of staff. They were quickly seized by Harris as part of her closing message to voters as she works to sharpen the choice at the ballot box for Americans.
“I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America,” she said, saying 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 reelected, Trump would no longer be tempered by people who would “restrain him” from his worst impulses.
Earlier Wednesday, Harris repeated her increasingly dire warnings about Trump’s mental fitness and his intentions for the presidency.
