As Election
Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator
John Kelly,
the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that he believed
that Donald Trump met the definition of a fascist.
Michael S. Schmidt
By Michael S. Schmidt
Oct. 22, 2024
Few top officials spent more time behind closed doors in the
White House with President Donald J. Trump than John F. Kelly, the former
Marine general who was his longest-serving chief of staff.
With Election Day looming, Mr. Kelly — deeply bothered by
Mr. Trump’s recent comments about employing the military against his domestic
opponents — agreed to three on-the-record, recorded discussions with a reporter
for The New York Times about the former president, providing some of his most
wide-ranging comments yet about Mr. Trump’s fitness and character.
Mr. Kelly was homeland security secretary under Mr. Trump
before moving to the White House in July 2017. He worked to carry out Mr.
Trump’s agenda for nearly a year and a half. It was a tumultuous period in
which he drew internal criticism over his own performance and grew disenchanted
and distressed by conduct on the part of the president that he considered at
times to be inappropriate and reflecting no understanding of the Constitution.
In the interviews, Mr. Kelly expanded on his previously
expressed concerns and stressed that voters, in his view, should consider
fitness and character when selecting a president, even more than a candidate’s
stances on the issues.
“In many cases, I would agree with some of his policies,” he
said, stressing that as a former military officer he was not endorsing any
candidate. “But again, it’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person
elected to high office.”
He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition
of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding
of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.
He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump
had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled
veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United
States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The
Atlantic.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign,
assailed Mr. Kelly in a statement, calling Mr. Kelly’s accounts of his time in
the White House “debunked stories” and saying Mr. Kelly had “beclowned”
himself.
Here are excerpts from, and audio of, Mr. Kelly’s comments.
Kelly said that based on his experience, Trump met the
definition of a “fascist.”
In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump
was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had
found online.
“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a
far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement
characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism,
forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he
said.
Kelly on Trump and Fascism
Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr.
Trump.
“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of
things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Mr. Kelly
said.
He added: “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.”
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Kelly said Trump chafed at limitations on his power.
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,”
Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most
powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he
wanted, anytime he wanted,” Mr. Kelly said.
“I think he’d love to be just like he was in business — he
could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too
much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot,” he said.
He said he was deeply troubled by Trump’s recent comments
about using the military against domestic opponents.
When Mr. Kelly left the White House in 2019, he decided he
would speak out on the record only if Mr. Trump said something that he found
deeply troubling or involved him and was wildly inaccurate.
Mr. Trump’s recent comments about using the military against
what he called the “enemy within” were so dangerous, he said, that he felt he
had to speak out.
Using the
Military Inside the U.S.
“And I think this issue of using the military on — to go
after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad
thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a
very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it,” Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump was repeatedly told dating
back to his first year in office why he should not use the U.S. military
against Americans and the limits on his authority to do so. Mr. Trump
nevertheless continued while in office to push the issue and claim that he did
have the authority to take such actions, Mr. Kelly said.
“Originally, conversation would be: Mr. President, that’s
outside your authority, or you know that’s a routine use, you really don’t want
to do that inside the United States,” he said. “But now that he’s talking about
it as ‘I’m gonna do it’ is, again, it’s disturbing.”
He said he believed Trump stood alone in his lack of
understanding of history and the Constitution.
Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump lacked a fundamental understanding
of basic American values and what being president is about.
“He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected
what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our
Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include
family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of,
certainly in my lifetime, that was like that,” Mr. Kelly said.
“He just doesn’t understand the values — he pretends, he
talks, he knows more about America than anybody, but he doesn’t.”
He said Trump wanted personal loyalty to outweigh loyalty to
the Constitution.
Mr. Kelly said that in the first few days of working for Mr.
Trump as his chief of staff in the summer of 2017, he had to explain to the
president that top government officials like himself had taken an oath to the
Constitution and would place that oath over personal loyalty.
Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump pressed him about that pledge and
seemed to have no appreciation that top aides were supposed to put their pledge
to the Constitution — and, by extension, the rule of law — above all else.
Kelly Sees Trump Putting Personal Loyalty Above the
Constitution
“He and I talked about it — it was a new concept for him, I
guess is the best way to put it, and I don’t think it’s one he ever totally
accepted.”
Mr. Kelly said that personal loyalty “is virtually
everything to him.”
As soon as someone in his orbit loses that loyalty, Mr.
Kelly said, that person is then out of favor with Mr. Trump and “your time is
short.”
Mr. Trump, Mr. Kelly said, wrongly believed that the
uniformed and retired senior generals he brought in to work for him would be
loyal to him above all else.
“Certainly, a big surprise for him, again, was if you
remember at the beginning of the administration, he would talk about ‘his
generals,’” Mr. Kelly said. “I don’t know why he thought that — but then a very
big surprise for him was that we were — those of us who were former generals
and certainly people still on active duty — that the commitment, the loyalty
was to the Constitution, without question, without second thought.”
Mr. Kelly added: “That was a big surprise to him that the
generals were not loyal to the boss, in this case him.”
Trump told him that “Hitler did some good things.”
Mr. Kelly confirmed previous reports that on more than one
occasion Mr. Trump spoke positively of Hitler.
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did
some good things, too,’” Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump told him.
Comments
About Hitler
Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump had little appreciation for
history — “I think he’s lacking in that,” he said — but said that he would
still try to explain to Mr. Trump why those comments about Hitler were
problematic.
“First of all, you should never say that,” Mr. Kelly said
that he told Mr. Trump. “But if you knew what Hitler was all about from the
beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist
life, you know, the, you know, philosophy, so that nothing he did, you could
argue, was good — it was certainly not done for the right reason.”
Mr. Kelly said that would usually end the conversation. But
Mr. Trump would occasionally bring it up again.
Kelly said Trump looked down on those who were disabled on
the battlefield.
In response to a question about previous stories about Mr.
Trump having disdain for disabled veterans, Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump did not
want to be seen in public with those who had lost limbs on the battlefield.
“Certainly his not wanting to be seen with amputees —
amputees that lost their limbs in defense of this country fighting for every
American, him included, to protect them, but didn’t want to be seen with them.
That’s an interesting perspective for the commander in chief to have.”
“He would just say: ‘Look, it just doesn’t look good for
me.’”
He said Trump called service members who were injured or
killed “losers and suckers,” despite denials from Trump and some aides.
Confirming a statement he gave to CNN last year, Mr. Kelly
said that on multiple occasions Mr. Trump told him that those Americans
wounded, captured or killed in action were “losers and suckers.”
“The time in Paris was not the only time that he ever said
it,” Mr. Kelly said, referring to reports that Mr. Trump told him that he did
not want to visit a cemetery where American service members killed during World
War I were buried.
“Whenever John McCain’s name came up, he’d go through this
rant about him being a loser, and all those people were suckers, and why do you
people think that people getting killed are heroes? And he’d go through this
rant.”
“To me, I could never understand why he was that way — he
may be the only American citizen that feels that way about those who gave their
lives or served their country,” Mr. Kelly said.
A Lack of Understanding of Selflessness and Sacrifice
Mr. Kelly said that on top of saying “losers” and “suckers,”
Mr. Trump often questioned the decisions by Americans to sacrifice for their
country.
At Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2017, Mr.
Trump toured the section where recently killed service members are buried,
including Mr. Kelly’s son Robert, a Marine who was killed in 2010 while
fighting in Afghanistan.
While walking through the cemetery, Mr. Kelly recounted, Mr.
Trump asked what had been in it for those who had given their lives.
“And I thought he was asking one of these rhetorical kind
of, you know, questions,” Mr. Kelly said. “But I didn’t realize he was serious
— he just didn’t see what the point was. As I got to know him, again, this
selflessness is something he just didn’t understand. What’s in it for them?”
Mr. Kelly had nothing good to say about Mr. Trump
Mr. Kelly was asked whether Mr. Trump had any empathy.
“No,” Mr. Kelly said.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The
Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining
high-profile federal investigations. More about Michael S. Schmidt
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