John Kelly, former President Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, says he believes Trump matches the definition of a “fascist” and would love to be a dictator if he returns to the White House.
Kelly made the comments in a series of interviews with The New York Times, which posted an article with audio excerpts Tuesday evening.
Asked if he thinks his former boss is a fascist, Kelly read aloud a definition of the word he 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.
“So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Kelly added.
“Certainly, the former president is in the far-right area,” he continued. “He's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators. He has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist, for sure.”
Kelly said Trump, the Republican nominee in next month's election, “would love to be” a dictator if he could.
“I think he’d love to be just like he was in business,” the former Trump aide said. “He could tell people to do things and they would do it and not really bother too much about what the legalities were and whatnot.”
Kelly also confirmed previously reported stories about controversial comments Trump made privately, including that he called service members who were wounded or killed in combat “losers” and “suckers,” that he did not want to be seen with military amputees, and that he said more than once he thought Adolf Hitler “did some good things, too.”
Read the rest at Spectrum News.