Trump told top aides he wanted the same kind of 'totally loyal' generals 'that Hitler had'

22 October 2024

A new bombshell report describes how, during his first administration, former President Donald Trump longed for the same kind of absolute dictatorial power that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler enjoyed.

In a Tuesday report, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about his conversations with General John Kelly (Trump's former Department of Homeland Security secretary and ex-White House chief of staff) who described how Trump harbored a peculiarly disdain for the military. He specifically lamented that he lacked the same kind of unwavering support from American military leadership that Hitler had during his reign.

"I need the kind of generals that Hitler had," Trump said, according to unnamed White House aides speaking confidentially to the Atlantic. "People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders."

Kelly told Goldberg that he had to gently remind Trump that there were multiple occasions in which Hitler's generals tried and failed to assassinate him, like on July 20, 1944. And of course, Hitler's generals ultimately lost World War II, with the ones who weren't killed dying in a bunker with Hitler as Stalin's army razed Berlin.

The four-star Marine general also frequently had to educate Trump about the basics of both military structure and military history. When Trump asked him who the "good guys" were in World War I, Kelly told him that it's customary for U.S. presidents to consider any nation allied with the United States to be the protagonists in any foreign war. He also had to caution him from praising Hitler, even when not referencing the Holocaust.

"He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’" Kelly told CNN's Jim Sciutto in an interview for his book. “[H]e 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... I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”

As an illustration of how he feels about the U.S. military, the article described how incensed the former president was that the family of Pvt. Vanessa Guillén — who was beaten to death by her boyfriend at age 20 while stationed at Fort Hood in Texas — sent the White House the bill for their daughter's funeral after Trump specifically asked them to at a White House meeting. Her funeral cost approximately $60,000. Unnamed participants in a 2020 meeting confided to Goldberg that the ex-president became irate after hearing about the cost.

"Trump became angry," Goldberg wrote, adding that Trump reportedly said “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f—ing Mexican!" He then told Mark Meadows, who was his chief of staff at the time, “Don’t pay it!”

“Can you believe it?” he then said, according to meeting attendees. “F—ing people, trying to rip me off.”

The report comes as the ex-president's campaign rhetoric has taken a decidedly more authoritarian tone. Sidney Blumenthal, who was an advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, recently wrote in the Guardian about how Trump is echoing Hitler in calling Democrats "the enemy from within," and his claims that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country."

Click here to read Goldberg's full article in the Atlantic (subscription required).

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