Trump Wishes He Were Hitler Because He Didn’t Watch The End Of The Movie

We’ll discuss John Kelly’s other horrible revelations next week.

Donald Trump is a fascist scumbag who admires Hitler, and while it’s October, none of this is much of a surprise.

Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, confirmed with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic that Hitler was just another in a long line of dictators Trump wanted to emulate. Peter Baker and Susan Glaser’s 2022 book The Divider: Trump in the White House already revealed the disturbing conversation where Trump asked Kelly, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?”

Goldberg writes:

This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. 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 Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.

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Kelly reportedly conducted a GED history course where he reminded Trump that the German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” However, Trump wouldn’t stand for Kelly impugning the honor of Nazis: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” he insisted.

You don’t have to hand it to Hitler

Like all malignant narcissists, Donald Trump demands loyalty and respect from others without earning or returning either. He perhaps understands that people are “loyal” to dictators only out of fear and coercion, but he’s constantly surprised that such “loyalty” doesn’t last. He whines that everyone he whips leaves him, but he thinks more power will prevent this from occurring.

On July 20 1944, German officer Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler by placing a briefcase bomb underneath the table during a meeting. When von Stauffenberg left, the bomb went off, but Hitler managed to survive with burns and ruptured ear drums. This specific assassination attempt involved officers like von Stauffenberg who weren’t true believers in Hitler’s madness. (Tom Cruise played von Stauffenberg in the 2008 film Valkyrie.)

Officer Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager turned against the Nazi government in 1942. He joined an anti-Hitler movement with Field Marshall Günther von Kluge. Von Boeselager planned to shoot both Hitler and Heinrich Himmler during a strategy meeting with von Kluge’s troops. “It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes,” he said.

The mission was aborted when Himmler didn’t show, which haunted von Boeselager for the rest of his life: “I always see Hitler from here to the fireplace in front of me and think, ‘What would have happened if you had shot him?’”

Kluge despised the Nazi thugs in Hitler’s inner circle and thought Hitler’s military bufoonery would lead Germany to ruin. However, a clueless Hitler later promoted Kluge to Commander-in-Chief West after firing Gerd von Rundstedt, who was loyal to Der Führer — not so much out of love but practicality. Rundstedt said at the Nuremberg Trials, “The Army and also the people still believed in Hitler at that time, and such an overthrow would have been quite unsuccessful.”

Henning von Tresckow, a major general in the German army, had a parcel bomb planted on Hitler’s plane in 1943 (he claimed it was two bottles of Cointreau brandy), but unfortunately, the bomb never went off because the plastic explosives had a defective fuse.

That same year, German officer Rudolf von Gertsdorff tried to blow himself up next to Hitler while guiding him through an exhibition of captured Soviet flags and weaponry in Berlin. The fuse was just 10 minutes, but Hitler’s patience for the tour ran out much sooner. He left the exhibit after a few minutes, once again avoiding a well-deserved death. (Von Gertsdorff was able to remove the bomb in a nearby bathroom with just seconds to spare. He probably had to remove his underpants, as well.)

Trump is both evil and a historical illiterate. He imagines an all-powerful, universally beloved Hitler straight from a Leni Riefenstahl production. When Trump talks about the “enemy within,” he usually means Democrats or the almost respectable Republicans who oppose him. He doesn’t think to conduct a background check on Tulsi Gabbard.

In The Twilight Zone episode, “The Man in the Bottle,” Arthur Castle asks a genie to make him the leader of a modern, powerful nation who can’t be voted out of office, and the genie turns him into Adolf Hitler on the last day of his miserable life. Trump would make a similarly short-sighted deal. He wants absolute power but that rarely ends well for those who wield it.

Donnie Loves Adolf

Donald Trump’s Hitler fascination is sadly not breaking news. John Kelly told CNN reporter Jim Sciutto a while back that Donald Trump had praised Hitler’s leadership. “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” Kelly recalled him saying. “[Hitler] rebuilt the economy.” (Hitler’s economic achievements were akin to a Ponzi scheme, but he did share Trump’s love for tariffs.)

A horrified Kelly said, “But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world … Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.” This is like Lex Luthor’s mother advising him not to quote Hitler in public. Anyone you need to say this to has already eased on down that fascist road.

Kelly, a former Marine general who knows a few things about power-mad despots, warns that Trump is “certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Predictably, the MAGA cult and its craven enablers have turned on Kelly rather than the Hitler humper in chief. CNN’s MAGA shill Scott Jennings suggested that Kelly might’ve just made up everything that sounds so perfectly in character for Trump.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade earned his propaganda pay when he said on Wednesday, “I can absolutely see [Trump] go, ‘You know what? It'd be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever.”

Of course, that was the whole problem: Trump wants military officials who are loyal to him and not the rule or law or the Constitution. Faithful Nazis aren’t admirable.

Outgoing New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu shrugged off the Hitler flattery. “You are dealing with an individual who makes outrageous statements all the time,” he said on Fox News. “They’re baked into the noise ... He’s denied them, and people will move on.”

Sununu doesn’t bother feigning indignation at the very idea that his party’s nominee for president would praise the monster who slaughtered millions. No, he only describes it in the terms of a news cycle: Trump will just exhaust a weary electorate with half-assed denials and furious insults.

Trump bashed Kelly, who served two tours in Iraq while Trump was filming The Apprentice, on social media, calling him a “total degenerate” on the same day the adjudicated rapist was accused of groping a model he met through Jeffrey Epstein.

“He was tough and dumb,” Trump raved. “The problem is his toughness morphed into weakness, because he became JELLO with time! The story about the Soldiers was A LIE, as are numerous other stories he told. Even though I shouldn’t be wasting my time with him, I always feel it’s necessary to hit back in pursuit of THE TRUTH. John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General, whose advice in the White House I no longer sought, and told him to MOVE ON!”

Trump ended with an imaginary anecdote about Kelly’s wife telling Trump how much he admired him. This wasn’t true even before their working relationship fell apart. (Kelly reportedly called Trump an “idiot” in private and openly questioned his sanity.)

Kelly was billed as the “adult in the room” who’d bring discipline and order to Trump’s White House. That wasn’t just impossible. It was like asking a wedding planner to organize a hurricane. Trump likely wanted a decorated general reporting to him, assuming he could steal Kelly’s valor when all he did was taint it by association.

It’s repulsive to think that a former and even future president wished he were Hitler, but in fairness, I also wish Trump were Hitler — in the sense that Hitler’s been dead for almost 80 years and his remains are under a parking lot. Unfortunately, both men’s darkness still infects the world. As Rod Serling said:

“Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare – Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive.”