The Democratic Party is keen to remind voters, especially those attending Trump’s planned rally Sunday in New York’s Madison Square Garden, and anyone nearby—that Donald Trump has repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler.
The Democratic National Committee plans to project unmissable messages in giant, all-capital letters on the New York City landmark, while Trump delivers his closing argument inside, that read “TRUMP PRAISED HITLER,” “TRUMP=UNSTABLE,” “TRUMP=UNHINGED,” “TRUMP=UNFIT,” and “TRUMP=CHEAT.”
As early voting begins in many states and Tuesday, November 5, looms, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has leaned hard on Trump’s shortcomings as part of her own final press. During Wednesday night’s town hall broadcast on CNN, Harris said outright that she believes Trump is a fascist and a “danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America.”
Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who served first under Trump as his secretary of homeland security, then as his chief of staff, delivered interviews this week in which he described his former boss as a fascist as well, offering up alternate descriptors of “authoritarian” and “dictator,” for the thesaurus-minded among readers. He also recalled that Trump “commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” a replay of a 2021 sound bite, and in another interview recalled Trump speaking wistfully of “Hitler’s generals,” resurfacing another old chestnut that made headlines in 2022 and subsequently appears to have vacated the population’s minds.
Kelly recalled asking for clarification that Trump meant Hitler’s generals, and upon receiving it, Kelly reminded Trump, “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” There have been two apparent assassination attempts on Trump in the past three months alone.
Trump’s admiration of Hitler is so old-hat that his late ex-wife Ivana Trump revealed in a 1990 Vanity Fair article that Trump kept a collection of Hitler’s speeches, My New Order, in a cabinet beside his bed.
When asked about the book, Trump responded, “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
Harris spoke from the White House on Wednesday to recap, calling Trump “increasingly unhinged and unstable.”
“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. “All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room.”
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, once called Trump “America’s Hitler.”
