2024 Election
It Was Just Revealed That Trump Said Something So Dark and Disturbing We Can’t Ignore It, and Americans Are Terrified
Things just took a scary turn.
The White House personnel during the Trump administration was a veritable carousel. There has never been any administration that saw the kind of turnover that occurred during the period between January of 2017 and January of 2021.
In fact, I almost consider January 6, 2021 to be the end of the Trump administration, because, well, you know… Even though he was still president until the 20th, that was the day Sane America collectively decided that era was over.
But one of the longest-serving members of Trump’s entire tenure, his chief of staff General John Kelly, was present for much of the major happenings in that time, and he’s not holding anything back when it comes to his takeaways from working for Trump.
And in audio released just yesterday, Kelly made it plain: Trump thinks like a dictator.
I don’t mean in that jokey, George W. Bush, “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… as long as I’m the dictator. Hehehe” kind of way. I mean, Trump literally wants to be one.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
That shouldn’t be news to anyone, honestly. He’s made friends with plenty of them over the years. He’s idolized them, in fact. And the psychology isn’t that hard to track, either.
John Kelly brought it into sharp focus in audio played by Anderson Cooper on CNN’s AC360:
Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.
Now, think about this for a minute. How many things have you seen Anthony Scaramucci be right about with Trump? All of them? Scaramucci was with Trump for so short a time on the White House carousel that we began measuring brief units of time in “Scaramuccis.”
I point that out because it then stands to reason that if anyone anywhere on earth knows more about Trump based on personal, close proximity experience with him than John Kelly, I can’t imagine who it is.
That excerpt is from an interview that Kelly did with the New York Times, and it’s far from all he said on the subject. “Certainly, the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that,” Kelly went on. “So, he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
No, seriously, that’s not all.
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government … [He] never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
But hey, why take it from just John Kelly? I mean, let’s go straight to the source, from YEARS ago:
TRUMP: “Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
(Article 2 does not in fact empower the president to do whatever they want.) pic.twitter.com/qIFP1AbHw6
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 23, 2019
Article II of the Constitution does indeed bestow broad powers on the country’s Executive. Unfortunately for Trump, it appears right between Articles I and III, which cover the Judicial and Legislative branches. That whole “checks and balances” thing.
But hearing Trump say that way back when isn’t the thing that makes it scary today. All that video does is serve to prove that John Kelly came away from his time under Trump with an impression, and nobody could possibly fault him for coming to the conclusions he did when you hear the former president say it in a video from when Kelly was there.
No, what’s scary is the extreme level that he took it to.
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump once said in private at the White House. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” John Kelly had to explain to Trump that Hitler’s generals weren’t loyal to him — they plotted to assassinate him multiple times and almost succeeded.
“No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” Trump responded.
Remember that time Trump said he knew more about NATO than Jim Mattis, the retired 4-star Marine General who actually served in NATO?
Remember when Trump suggested that Admiral William McRaven and General Stanley McChrystal should be called back to active duty so he could court-martial them for publicly disagreeing with him?
Remember that time he asked retired Army General Mark Milley, then the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” while talking about the protesters that took to the streets in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd?
We are not talking about a man who seems like a fascist. Donald Trump IS a fascist.
Let me bring this full circle, you guys. Maybe you’ve seen this picture before, or at least it looks a little familiar. I’ll explain why after the pic jump:
That’s Benito Mussolini. You know, the Italian dictator who founded and ran the National Fascist Party. This picture of him was part of his propaganda campaign. So what’s he doing here stripped to the waist?
He’s harvesting wheat, like an everyday Joe might. Okay, Giuseppe, but still. That’s the founder of fascism as a political movement posing like a regular old citizen, doing the hard work that keeps the wheels of society turning.
Now, do you recognize this picture?
You should. That just happened.
See, we’re no longer in a conversation about whether Trump might be, or could be, or would be anything. This is now about keeping America out of the hands of a fascist who praised Hitler, who said that “the Chinese Generals [in Tiananmen Square] would know what to do” in response to protests, who literally strapped on an apron and took a picture just like Mussolini’s.
This is new territory.
Thankfully, someone else has noticed that Trump likes to play Dictator Dress-Up: Kamala Harris.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House today, the Vice President warned that these reports from John Kelly about what Trump has said are a “window into who Donald Trump really is.” I was thinking more of a wide-open door, myself, but go off, Kamala:
Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable. So, the bottom line is this: We know what Donald Trump wants; he wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?
Well, we know if he’s re-elected, there will be no John Kelly around to explain that Hitler’s General, Erwin “Desert Fox” Rommel, ate a cyanide pill in order to save his own family after he was discovered to have been involved in a plot to kill Der Führer.
Is that what Trump wants? Does he want aides and advisors and employees who answer only to him, and not America? Does he want men and women who would rather die than suffer his wrath.
The answer is, and has always been, a resounding yes.
I personally think Kamala should get a little louder about this. Because it’s less than two weeks away, and what seems like should be a runaway election for the Good Guys is instead neck and neck, according to the polls. That’s baffling to me, since this whole thing basically amounts to either “titty sprinkles and cupcakes for everyone” or “every venereal disease, all at once.”
You have to vote your conscience, of course. I hope your conscience doesn’t act like a dictator.
Comments
Comments are currently closed.