In a remotely sane political universe, retired Gen. John Kelly’s “October shock” would turn the presidential race upside down.
Kelly, who was former President Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, spent several hours with a New York Times reporter warning the American people that the man who may very well be our next president met the definition of a fascist and would govern like a dictator if given the chance. In the resulting article, Kelly describes his former boss as someone who has no understanding of the Constitution or respect for the rule of law.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators,” Kelly told the Times. “He certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Let’s not overlook how amazing — and terrifying — all of this is and what the American people are being told in the final two weeks of this campaign.
If that were not enough: Kelly says Trump told him that “Hitler did some good things” and that he wishes America’s generals were more like the führer’s. We are also getting new details about the depths of Trump’s contempt for the men and women who serve in the military, especially those who are wounded, killed or captured.
(Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung denied Kelly’s claims in a statement, arguing Kelly “totally beclowned himself” by recounting “debunked stories” about the Trump administration.)
Of course, it would have been better if this had come out sooner and if more insiders throughout Trump’s orbit had spoken out. But let’s not overlook how amazing — and terrifying — all of this is and what the American people are being told in the final two weeks of this campaign. All the alarms are flashing. All of the warnings are blaring. And they are coming not just from Democrats or those of us who have been Never Trump since the moment he descended his golden escalator.
This warning is from Trump’s former chief of staff, and it comes just a week after the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, called Trump “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever.” Trump’s former defense secretary Jim Mattis — another general — seconded Milley’s warning.
Kelly’s interview comes after Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, refused to endorse him and after another former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, said Trump was a threat to democracy.
It’s all breathtaking — or it would be, if we had not all gone numb over the last nine years.
I call this an October shock, rather than a surprise, because Trump’s affinity for strongmen and brutality has been a feature of his politics from the beginning, and his rhetoric has been increasingly suffused with Reichian rhetoric. He refers to migrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country. He has openly fantasized about deploying the military against his fellow Americans, some of whom he calls “the enemy within.”
It’s all breathtaking — or it would be, if we had not all gone numb over the last nine years.
In the early days of his first campaign, Trump mocked Sen. John McCain’s status as a POW, saying, “I like people who were not captured.” He called service members who were injured or killed “losers and suckers.” According to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Trump also told senior aides “that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action. To him, they could be left behind, because they had performed poorly by getting captured.”
But it is Trump’s appetite for power that is the most alarming.
Kelly served with Trump in the Oval Office for nearly a year and a half. What he saw was a man who was angered by the limits on his power and who did “not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot.”
Kelly describes a man who lacks even a basic appreciation for the fundamentals of this democracy. “He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America, America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that,” Kelly told The Times.
This should be disqualifying. This is disqualifying.
But will any of it make a difference? Does Kelly’s warning come too late to stop America’s sleepwalk toward authoritarianism? My honest answer is I do not know. I would like to think there’s a chance.
The Democratic polling firm Blueprint found that the best-testing closing argument against Trump is one that emphasizes the opposition of his former Cabinet and fellow Republicans. The needle moved significantly when voters were old, “Nearly half of Donald Trump’s Cabinet have refused to endorse him.”
So with less than two weeks to go, the Harris campaign has just been handed what seems to be an effective closing argument. Put it on television. Blanket the airwaves. Break through the information silos.
If Americans hear what Kelly and Mattis and Milley are saying, they might still vote for Trump. But they cannot say that were not warned.