Former White House national security adviser John Bolton suggested Tuesday that while a second Trump administration poses “dangers” for the country, former President Trump is “not capable” of being a fascist.
“I think it’s a mistake to get into a controversy over whether Trump meets the definition of fascist or not,” Bolton said Tuesday night in an interview on CNN’s “The Source.”
“I think his behavior alone is troubling enough,” he told host Kaitlan Collins. “To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy. Trump’s not capable of that.”
“You know, Adolf Hitler wrote a profoundly troubling book called Mein Kampf, ‘My Struggle.’ Donald Trump couldn’t even read his way all the way through that book, let alone write something like it,” Bolton added, in remarks highlighted by Mediaite.
He continued, “I’m not trying to understate the dangers of a Trump presidency. I think it’s important to focus on the dangers themselves.”
Bolton’s remarks come after retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff during Trump’s first term, told The Atlantic that the Republican nominee once praised Hitler’s generals for their loyalty.
Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in his piece, published Tuesday, that Kelly “told me that when Trump raised the subject of ‘German generals,’ Kelly responded by asking, “’Do you mean [Otto von] Bismarck’s generals?’”
“I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War,’ Kelly reportedly told Goldberg. “I said, ‘Do you mean the Kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that [Erwin] Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.’”
Goldberg also reported that the ex-president said in a private conversation that “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” citing “two people who heard him say this.”
“People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders,” the former president reportedly added.
The Trump campaign rejected all accounts published in The Atlantic.
“This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this,” Trump campaign adviser Alex Pfeiffer said in a statement to The Hill.
The news comes as Trump has ratcheted up the intensity in his rhetoric in the final weeks of the 2024 campaign — stoking fear of retribution on political rivals and suggesting he could use the military to quell protests.