Donald Trump’s fondness for dictators is well-known. Now his former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has claimed in multiple interviews that the ex-president praised Hitler for ‘doing good things.’ However, the German dictator is far from the only strongman Trump has endorsedread more
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Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump. Reuters
Donald Trump’s admiration for dictators is under the scanner yet again.
This comes after John Kelly, the former White House Chief of Staff during the Trump administration, in multiple interviews claimed that Trump praised Hitler for ‘doing some good things.’
He also warned that his former boss meets the definition of a fascist and would rule ‘like a dictator’ if elected.
Trump’s rival Vice President Kamala Harris has seized on Kelly’s comments, saying they offer a window into who the former president “really is” and the kind of commander in chief he would be.
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Trump has since lashed out at Kelly and claimed that the former retired Marine Corps general ‘made up a story.’
But there’s no denying that the former president has repeatedly praised dictators and strongmen.
All of which is more disturbing as Trump has vowed to be a ‘dictator on day one.’
Let’s take a closer look at Trump’s repeated praise of dictators.
Let’s take a closer look:
Trump’s fondness for dictators has been on display for decades.
On Adolf Hitler
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders,” Trump said in the White House as per The Atlantic.
Kelly said Trump repeatedly told him “you know, Hitler did some good things too.”
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly told The New York Times.
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Trump previously asked Kelly “why can’t you be like the German generals?”
To which he responded that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.”
Trump then answered, “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him.”
Trump’s first wife Ivana in 1990 told Vanity Fair he even kept a book Hitler’s speeches by the bed.
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“Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed…” the piece stated.
“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and he’s a Jew,” Trump told the Vanity Fair reporter.
Davis told the writer, “I did give him a book about Hitler. But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”
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“If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them," Trump added.
On Mikhail Gorbachev
In a 1990 Playboy interview, Trump claimed that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped end the Cold War, did not have “a firm enough hand” to deal with pro-democracy demonstrators.
“Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That’s my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand,” Trump said.
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He also called top-level Soviet officials ‘much tougher and smarter than our representatives.’
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Trump in the same interview praised China’s handling of Tiananmen square.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength,” he added.
In a recording, the US president admitted he was fond of authoritarian leaders, telling journalist Bob Woodward the “tougher and meaner” they are, “the better I get along with them.”
On Saddam Hussein
Trump in 2016 praised Saddam Hussein.
“You know what he did well?” Trump asked as per PBS. “He killed terrorists. He did that so good.”
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“They didn’t read ’em the rights, they didn’t talk. They were a terrorist, it was over.”
On Kim Jong-Un
“At a very young age, he was able to assume power. A lot of people, I’m sure, tried to take that power away, whether it was his uncle or anybody else. And he was able to do it. So obviously, he’s a pretty smart cookie,” Trump told NBC in 2017.
Though he later he threatened dictator Kim Jong Un with “fire and fury” if “Little Rocket Man” endangered the US, things changed by 2019 when Trump visitedNorth Korea two years later.
While Trump’s outreach to Kim won plaudits, his assessment that the mercurial North Korean, who is accused of gross human rights violations, had a “great and beautiful vision for his country” was met with widespread derision.
Trump also boasted about Kim writing him ‘beautiful letters’ and said that they ‘fell in love.’
“Kim wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love,” Trump said as per CNN.
On Xi Jinping
Trump, while running for president,praised Xi.
“He certainly doesn’t want to see turmoil and death. He doesn’t want to see it. He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well,” Trump told Reuters.
While in office, Trump’s message on China and Xi swung wildly, lurching between tough talking on trade and the spread of Covid-19, to praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping after China’s ruling party abolished term limits in 2018.
“He’s now president for life… I think it’s great,” Trump declared.
“President Xi, who is a strong man, I call him King, he said, ‘But I am not King, I am president.’ I said, ‘No, you’re president for life and therefore, you’re King.’ He said, ‘Huh. Huh.’ He liked that,” Trump said in 2019.
Trump has continued to lavish praise on Xi in recent interviews.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump called Xi is “a brilliant man.”
“If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find [them], there’s nobody like that: the look, the brain, the whole thing,” Trump added.
Trump repeated his comments at a campaign event in Hampshire in November 2023.
“President Xi is like central casting,” he said. “There’s nobody in Hollywood that could play the role of President Xi — the look, the strength, the voice.”
On Recep Tayyip Erdogan
While some surmised the remark was made in jest it chimed with the warm words he has had for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has also steadily increased his own powers and whom Trump calls a “friend.”
Trump also praised Erdogan after he returned to power in 2023.
“Congratulations to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his big and well deserved victory in Turkey,” Trump wrote on social media. “I know him well, he is a friend, and have learned firsthand how much he loves his Country and the great people of Turkey, which he has lifted to a new level of prominence and respect!”
“It’s my honour to be with a friend of mine, somebody I’ve become very close to, in many respects, and he’s doing a very good job: the President of Turkey,” Trump said in 2019.
“Thank you very much. It’s a great honour and privilege – because he’s become a friend of mine – to introduce President Erdogan of Turkey. He’s running a very difficult part of the world. He’s involved very, very strongly and, frankly, he’s getting very high marks,” Trump said of Erdogan in 2017.
On Vladimir Putin
But it is the Republican’s relationship with Russia’s Putin that has attracted the most attention, in light of claims that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s chances, allegations which Russia denies.
At a summit with Putin in 2018, Trump appeared bowled over by the former secret services chief, saying he believed him over the FBI on the allegations of campaign interference, and describing his counterpart as “very, very strong.”
As per CNN, he later defended the press conference, saying, “So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!”
Trump also praised Putin while running for the US presidency in 2016.
“The man has very strong control over a country,” Trump said. “Now, it’s a very different system and I don’t happen to like the system, but certainly in that system, he’s been a leader. Far more than our president has been a leader.”
On Viktor Orban
Trump has also repeatedly complimented Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Trump at a campaign rally in October 2023 praised Orban, who says he runs an “illiberal democracy,” as “one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world.”
Trump in January praised Orban again.
“There’s a great man, a great leader in Europe, Viktor Orbán,” Trump said as per MSNBC. “He’s the prime minister of Hungary. He’s a very great leader, a very strong man. Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s nice to have a strongman running the country.”
What do experts say?
A piece in MSNBC argued that Trump knows exactly what he is doing with his praise for dictators.
“…Trump knows full well what a “strongman” leadership style entails, and when he declared that it’s “nice to have a strongman running the country,” it was the latest piece of evidence that the Republican is effectively running on an authoritarian platform,” the piece stated.
“He’s psychologically terrified by weakness,” Peter Trumbore, professor of political science at Oakland University in Michigan said.
For Trumbore, it’s plain to see: Trump is “envious of the power these strongmen wield”.
“When he sees Erdogan or (Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor) Orban he sees democratically elected presidents who have essentially used institutions of democracy to turn their states into soft authoritarian regimes. I think Trump wants that for himself.”
Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, also ascribed Trump’s rapport with autocrats to envy, tinged with “a certain macho inclination.”
“He probably likes that Putin rides a horse without a shirt on and appears like a ‘real man’,” Kupchan said.
‘Would love to be a dictator’
In his interview with the Times, Kelly also said Trump met the definition of a fascist. After reading the definition aloud, including that fascism was “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader,” Kelly concluded Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly added that Trump often fumed at any attempt to constrain his power, and that “he would love to be” a dictator.
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,” Kelly told the Times, adding later, “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.”
Kelly is not the first former top Trump administration official to cast the former president as a threat.
Retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bob Woodward in his recent book “War” that Trump was “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” And retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who worked as secretary of defence under Trump, reportedly later told Woodward that he agreed with Milley’s assessment.
Throughout Trump’s political rise, the businessman-turned-politician benefited from the support of military veterans.
AP VoteCast found that about 6 in 10 military veterans said they voted for Trump in 2020, as did just over half of those with a veteran in the household. Among voters in this year’s South Carolina Republican primary, AP VoteCast found that close to two-thirds of military veterans and people in veteran households voted for Trump over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s toughest opponent in the 2024 Republican primary.
With inputs from agencies
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