The vice president seized on reports in which John Kelly, a former chief of staff to Donald J. Trump, recounted explosive comments by Mr. Trump and said he met the definition of a “fascist.”
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John Kelly, a former White House chief of staff, in 2018.
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that former President Donald J. Trump’s reported comments praising Nazi generals offered “a window into who Donald Trump really is,” calling it “deeply troubling” that her Republican rival had apparently invoked the German dictator in conversations with one of his former chiefs of staff, John F. Kelly.
Ms. Harris and her campaign have pounced on Mr. Kelly’s comments, recounted in recent news stories and in on-the-record interviews, in the hopes that she will benefit with undecided voters and a slice of conservative-leaning ones by refreshing their memories of a Trump presidency 13 days before Election Day.
In her brief remarks, delivered at the vice president’s residency in Washington, Ms. Harris warned that Mr. Trump had grown “increasingly unhinged and unstable” and said that he would require that the U.S. military “be loyal to him personally,” even if Mr. Trump did not obey the law during the course of a second term.
“It is clear, from John Kelly’s words, that Trump is someone who, I quote, ‘certainly falls into the general definition of ‘fascist,’” Ms. Harris said.
Mr. Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Mr. Trump’s longest-running chief of staff, is one of the highest-ranking former Trump administration officials to publicly denounce the former president’s character and question his ability to serve.
In several interviews with The New York Times, which published an article about them on Tuesday, Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump met the definition of a “fascist” based on what he had seen working closely with him.
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Source: nytimes.com