In his new book The Return of Great Powers, which comes out Tuesday, reporter Jim Sciutto interviews several of Trump’s former advisers. All of them stressed that Trump regularly lavished praise on authoritarian leaders around the world, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “fantastic,” Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant,” and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un an “OK guy.”

Horrifyingly, Trump also said, “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” according to John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019.

“I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly told Sciutto. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”

Kelly said that Trump also praised Hitler for achieving complete loyalty from senior Nazi officials—and Trump expected similar fealty from the retired generals he brought on to his cabinet.

“He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly said. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal—that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”

“Hitler did some good things” would end absolutely anyone else’s campaign in America. And this guy still has a chance of winning.

  • Zeppo
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    9 months ago

    His ex-wife Ivana said in their divorce hearings that he kept Mein Kampf on his bedside table. Very believable, but perhaps he had it just as a token since I’m not convinced he can really read.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        People ain’t sick of reading it yet, but I think the only reassuring thing about racist governments is that they inevitably fail by their own doing.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          It took most of the world uniting against him to get to that point. I don’t know if that can be considered “their own doing.” I guess that happened because of things they did, but it didn’t passively fall apart. Don’t be complacent hoping fascists will just destroy themselves because there is little to no evidence for that.

          • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            No, I wouldn’t say it passively fell apart either.

            My argument is that they don’t recognize limitations. It’s a flaw baked into anti-intellectualism. Other than fiat currency, every real resource is finite, regardless of it’s current abundance. Facist governments can’t just “secure” their border and stay in power. They have to maintain a strongman, a national identity, something to prove they are better than the other.

            What we see as poor strategies (Hitler’s support the Luftwaffe vs Wehrmacht) they would see as the “obvious choice.”

            It can get very bad, to the point millions are killed. But it is unsustainable, and they will make enough “obvious choices” that enables their downfall.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      He also implemented one of the first public smoking bans. Which is ironic considering all the other drugs he was on.

  • snooggums@midwest.social
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    9 months ago

    Kelly said that Trump also praised Hitler for achieving complete loyalty from senior Nazi officials—and Trump expected similar fealty from the retired generals he brought on to his cabinet.

    “He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly said. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal—that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”

    If John Kelly had any morals he would have immediately held a press conference to tell the nation that Trump was praising Hitler’s expectations that all generals have loyal to him before the nation and then immediately resign.

    All these Republicans waiting years to expose this instead of when Trump was in power shows they are all complicit.

  • schema@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Ah yes, the “hitler was good for the economy” bullshit. Even if you’d ignore all the atrocities (which you shouldn’t), fact is that the outcome was a country in ruins.

    And Hitler’s economic plan was always based on stealing resources from other countries through war, because else the country’s spending was unsustainable.

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    9 months ago

    Trump striving to be like notoriously vicious dictators is part of what makes him so appealing to conservative voters.

    If history is our guide, your conservative coworkers, neighbors and family members will politely watch as you are escorted onto a bus headed for re-education camp. They won’t be overt or cartoonish in their evil. They will just be themselves.

  • rsuri@lemmy.world
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    Not that anyone would expect Trump to know this, but Hitler rebuilding the economy was kind of a fraud. He basically used fake currency (before it was cool), banned unions and made it nearly impossible to quit a job, and stole from a big chunk of Germany’s own population and those surrounding it. Ordinary Germans saw a decline in their real wages by 25% from 1933 to 1938, and obviously things only got worse from there.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      That actually is the core Nazi ideology. Honest work building something up by the rules is not cool, means weakness and degeneracy. Fraud and robbery is cool, means strength and cunning. But at the same time putting yourself into something sacrificial is cool too. “We do not sow” and all that.

      So it was fraud, but I think most of the Germans loyal to that ideology understood that emotionally.

      Many people in the Middle East and Africa have such worldview today.

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      9 months ago

      Additionally many undesirable people were forced out of high skill jobs or had their business taken away. Robbing businesses of effective managers and workers. Leading to loss of productivity and a fall in GDP.

      Both Nazi Germany and post war divided Germany made for very interesting natural experiments in economics. Weirdly because it would be unethical to do them as a controlled studying…

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The right has always loved to say shit like “Mussolini made the trains run on time,” as code for “maybe a little fascism is good.”

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    9 months ago

    To be fair, Hitler was a more talented painter than Trump is a businessman. A biiiiiiiig /s.

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      9 months ago

      I’ve never even seen that guy with a 5 o’clock shadow or razor burn. It’s really weird.

      He occasionally comes makes a rare appearance without the bronzer or without his hairspray, but never even a hint that he’s capable of growing facial hair.

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    9 months ago

    This will not sway republicans from voting for him.

    I wonder how they’d react if “Trump” was switched with “Biden”. Or, LOL, “Obama”.

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      9 months ago

      Surely Jordan Klepper or someone like him have read quotes by Trump and attributed them to Biden, Hillary, etc only to witness the hypocritical reactions

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        9 months ago

        Kelpper has done something like this but, to my knowledge, not something as dramatic as this Hitler stuff.

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      9 months ago

      Baby Boomers can’t die off fast enough; it seems very reductive to blame this entire situation on them, but in simplest terms they are still the largest voting bloc and they are the last generation to swing more conservative as they aged.

      Millennials and Zoomers aren’t off the hook, though. We need to not let apathy take over; every election is important, because there are those who are looking to take away your rights at every opportunity they get - and we can’t let them win, ever. For the sake of all of our futures - vote like your life depends on it, because it actually might.