A fellow general on Wednesday called on John Kelly, the former four-star Marine who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, to endorse Kamala Harris.
“I am disappointed that he hasn’t embraced Kamala Harris, same with John Bolton and Mark Esper and others that have spoken out against Trump,” said retired Brigadier General Steve Anderson, a Republican who is supporting Harris.
Anderson and another high-ranking U.S. Army officer said Kelly felt it was his duty to America to share bombshell revelations that he thinks Donald Trump is a “fascist” who praised Adolph Hitler.
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“As someone who worked alongside John Kelly, I know he’s speaking out now only because he views this as a fundamental threat to our democracy and country,” said retired Army Reserve Col. Kevin Carroll, a former senior counselor to Kelly in the Trump White House.
Carroll added that Kelly “made every effort to stay above partisan politics” but ultimately couldn’t avoid weighing in.
The call with Carroll and Anderson was arranged by the Harris-Walz campaign. The call was designed to highlight new stories by The Atlantic and The New York Times in which Kelly went on the record calling Trump a “fascist” who praised Adolph Hitler.
On Wednesday, Anderson also likened Trump to Nazi leaders, explaining how the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, forced him to speak out.
“My thoughts were: ‘If we don’t step forward now and stand up, I mean, what are we going to do?’” he said. “‘Wait for the jackboots to be marching down the street and the Brownshirts to come rolling out and our kids get enrolled in Trump youth or whatever?’ I mean, that’s where we could be headed.”
Anderson said he was “disappointed” that Kelly has not endorsed Harris. He said he understands Kelly’s reasoning that military leaders should make endorsements, but said by taking the job of chief of staff to Trump, “You’ve kind of lost that, that card you had before that you’re agnostic.”
According to The Atlantic, Trump told his former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
The New York Times followed up with its own story on Tuesday in which Kelly, a former Marine general, expressed deep concern about Trump’s recent comments about using the military against his political adversaries, saying, “It’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected to high office.”
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” Kelly told The New York Times.
The Trump campaign has denied the new reports and slammed Kelly personally. In a Wednesday press release, the former president’s team called the Atlantic “dishonest” and suggested the outlet’s bombshell piece was politically motivated.
Carroll bolstered Kelly’s story, saying that men like him “have a reputation for having a character for honesty, which is not something that could be said of Donald Trump.”
Even if Kelly does not endorse Harris for president, Anderson said he knows how he’ll vote: “The man would rather chew broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.”
