Ricardo Torres
RACINE – In a Wisconsin campaign stop Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz slammed former President Donald Trump over published reports that the Republican presidential nominee had spoken admiringly during his term in office of Adolf Hitler and his generals.
“As a 24-year veteran of the military, that makes me sick as hell, and it should make you sick," Walz said to the crowd at Memorial Hall in Racine on Tuesday night. "The guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness.”
The Minnesota governor made the remarks during the second of two stops in Wisconsin and after an earlier rally in Madison with former President Barack Obama. With less than two weeks left in the presidential race, polling shows a narrow race between Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
In a story published Tuesday, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported Trump proclaimed, "I need the kind of generals Hitler had," citing two anonymous sources said to have heard the private conversation.
In an interview with the New York Times, Trump's former chief of staff, retired Marine general John Kelly, recounted Trump speaking in positive terms about the Nazi leader.
"He commented more than once that, 'You know, Hitler did some good things, too,'" Kelly told the Times.
Kelly in the Times interview said he regards Trump as meeting the definition of a fascist.
“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.
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.
Kelly's tenure in the White House was tumultuous, even as he tried to bring Marine Corps-style order to the administration. After Kelly left, Trump was critical of him, saying he was not able to keep up with the demands of the job.
"John Kelly has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated because he failed to serve his President well while working as Chief of Staff and currently suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome," spokesperson Steven Cheung said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY.
On Wednesday morning the Harris campaign organized a virtual call with Brigadier Gen. Steve Anderson, a Republican, and retired Army Reserve Colonel Kevin Carroll responded to Trump's reported remarks.
"He constantly seems to confuse loyalty to the Constitution to loyalty to him," Anderson said. "We're concerned that (if re-elected) he wants to use the military to suppress his opposition in the country and man the U.S. border. Which are things the military is not supposed to do."
Anderson said he wishes Kelly spoke up sooner "but it's great that he has."
"People that know (Trump) best are most opposed to him, his presidency," Anderson said.
Carroll, who was in Trump administration and served under Kelly when he was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said Kelly speaking out "was no small step for him."
"He's seen Donald Trump up close in a way very few Americans have and he's warning us that a second Trump term would be dangerous," Carroll said. "The former president's statements have been getting more and more unhinged."
USA TODAY contributed reporting.
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