John Kelly Speaks Out

The retired general and former Trump Chief of Staff goes on record, and in person, in a series of interviews.

Photo of Ret. Gen. John Kelly by Tom Brenner for The New York Times

We just witnessed something extraordinary and unprecedented.

Former Marine General John Kelly, Trump’s former Secretary of Homeland Security who went on to become his longest serving chief of staff, has long been a witness to his former boss’s authoritarian mindset, his disdain for soldiers, and his bizarre and unsettling admiration for Adolf Hitler.

For example, according to reporting by The Atlantic in 2020, General Kelly was with Trump when they visited Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day in 2017. While standing by the grave of Kelly’s son, who’d been killed in Afghanistan, Trump said aloud, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” 

At the time, Kelly declined to be interviewed for the story. He was no doubt cognizant of the delicacy of having former aides and high ranking military officers undermine the sitting Commander-in-Chief. 

But this was but one instance in a pattern of disparaging remarks Trump has reportedly made about dead soldiers. 

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” The retired general added, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

Trump called the report lies, but Kelly confirmed the reporting in a lengthy written statement to CNN’s Jake Tapper in 2023. Despite Kelly’s affirmation of the facts, Trump repeated that denial at the debate with Biden—and Tapper did not fact check him.

Then at his rallies and in interviews, Trump began to threaten to use the military to go after his political opponents, whom Trump called the “enemies from within.” He began naming names, including Rep. Adam Schiff of California and Nancy Pelosi and her husband.

This week, Kelly decided to put himself on record against Trump in person during a series of recorded interviews with the New York Times. As the Times noted,

With Election Day looming, Mr. Kelly—deeply bothered by Mr. Trump’s recent comments about employing the military against his domestic opponents—agreed to three on-the-record, recorded discussions with a reporter for The New York Times about the former president, providing some of his most wide-ranging comments yet about Mr. Trump’s fitness and character.

In today’s piece, I’ll lay out what Kelly said and reconfirmed about Trump, including audio so you can hear it from him directly. I’ll place this information within the context of what we already know or have seen reported about Trump’s authoritarian ways and his deep disrespect for those in uniform. 

Finally, I’ll touch upon the Trump campaign’s vehement denial, in contrast to what those who know and have served with Kelly are saying about the veracity of his statements. I’ll end with a warning about why U.S. voters must take his warnings as the dead serious truth.

A “fascist, for sure”

Kelly was asked directly about Trump’s dictatorial nature and whether Kelly considered him a fascist. The retired general, ever careful in his words, read from a definition of fascism he had found online.

“[L]ooking 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,” Kelly said.

Kelly agreed that the definition accurately described Trump. “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Kelly said.

He added: “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.”

You can hear his frank assessment directly here:

A disturbing admiration for Hitler

During the 100th celebration of the end of World War I, Trump insisted to Kelly that “Hitler did a lot of good things.” That was according to a book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. The statement reportedly “stunned” Kelly, who then “reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and “connected the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities.” Kelly told Trump he was mistaken, but Trump pointed instead to Germany’s economic recovery during the 1930s.

“Kelly pushed back again,” Bender wrote, “and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.”

Trump’s team denied this account, of course, saying it was “fake news” that was made up by a general who was “incompetent” and was fired. (Trump has a number of former generals and aides currently speaking out against him whom he now says he never respected, despite having hired or promoted them himself.)

Kelly directly addressed the Hitler comments in the NYT interview, confirming the account of Trump saying Hitler “did a lot of good things.”

“First of all, you should never say that,” Kelly said that he told Trump upon hearing those words. “But if you knew what Hitler was all about from the beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, you know, the, you know, philosophy, so that nothing he did, you could argue, was good—it was certainly not done for the right reason.”

You can listen to the audio about Trump and Hitler here.

The Atlantic separately reported yesterday that Trump yearned for the kind of absolute obedience he believed Hitler had from his generals (despite being told that they once tried to assassinate their Fuhrer):

As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” 

The Trump campaign, true to form, issued a denial. “This is absolutely false,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to The Atlantic. “President Trump never said this.”

(Narrator: Trump said it.)

Loyalty to Trump, not the Constitution

Another deeply disturbing aspect of Trump’s leadership is his belief that his subordinates, including the military, owed their allegiance first to him, and not to the Constitution. This is of course directly contrary to the very oaths that they take. Wrote the Times,

Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump pressed him about that pledge and seemed to have no appreciation that top aides were supposed to put their pledge to the Constitution—and, by extension, the rule of law—above all else.

“He and I talked about it—it was a new concept for him, I guess is the best way to put it, and I don’t think it’s one he ever totally accepted.”

Mr. Kelly said that personal loyalty “is virtually everything to him.”

As commentator Ron Filipkowski noted, taking a page straight off of Wikipedia, this was little different than the Hitler Oath sworn by officers in Nazi Germany, which pledged personal loyalty to Hitler rather than to the German constitution.

Political and legal commentator Allison Gill added,

In 2017, when I worked for the department of veterans affairs, Trump amended the Hatch Act provisions. He changed it from “You can’t oppose or support a candidate for political office” to “You can’t say anything bad about Trump.” He also expanded it to include social media.

Using the military against U.S. citizens

During his presidency, Trump raised the possibility of deploying the military against civilians several times. At one point, he even once asked if he could have protestors shot in the legs, according to former Defense Secretary Mike Esper, who has also spoken out against his former boss.

Kelly confirmed that Trump was consistently interested in using the military to quell civil unrest or protest. Per the Times’s reporting,

Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump was repeatedly told dating back to his first year in office why he should not use the U.S. military against Americans and the limits on his authority to do so. Mr. Trump nevertheless continued while in office to push the issue and claim that he did have the authority to take such actions, Mr. Kelly said.

This is perhaps one of the most disturbing beliefs held by Trump, and the very thing that caused Kelly to come forth in person and speak directly to the Times. Trump recently has threatened to use the U.S. military or the National Guard to come after “radical leftists” and his political opponents, the so-called “enemies from within.” 

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling provided a strong and clear statement about why this is such a disturbing position by Trump:

“It would be illegal for the military to step in because of something called the Posse Comitatus Act. They can provide support to civil authorities if there are riots or disturbances. But the right to peacefully come together and voice your concerns that is as American as apple pie….

When you start talking about the military becoming involved, it implies that you are going to mobilize the active duty component to provide resources under the Insurrection Act. Now, only the President can call for the Insurrection Act. And at that point, the elements of Posse Comitatus, where military personnel cannot get involved in arresting or putting down individual citizens, plays a part. 

I would think it would be very dangerous to basically call upon the Insurrection Act as a president, unless there is a true insurrection. A riot or a protest by the citizens of the United States is not insurrection, it’s voicing a different view.”

“Losers and suckers”

It wasn’t just once, but multiple times, that Trump referred to soldiers killed, wounded or captured as “losers and suckers.” Kelly basically confirmed, live and on tape, what he had written in the 2023 statement to Jake Tapper.

“The time in Paris was not the only time that he ever said it,” Kelly said.  “Whenever John McCain’s name came up, he’d go through this rant about him being a loser, and all those people were suckers, and why do you people think that people getting killed are heroes? And he’d go through this rant.”

“To me, I could never understand why he was that way—he may be the only American citizen that feels that way about those who gave their lives or served their country,” Kelly said, emphasizing that Trump often questioned the decisions by Americans to sacrifice for their country.

Here is a audio clip of the interview with Kelly confirming that Trump said “losers and suckers” multiple times, and that he could never wrap his head around the idea of serving the nation selflessly.

Kelly’s statements about servicemembers and Trump dovetails with other reporting by The Atlantic on Tuesday disclosing what Trump really thought of soldiers. It raised the example of Vanessa Guillén, an army private who was bludgeoned to death in 2020 at an army base in Houston. Trump initially had offered to pay the burial costs for Guillén, but when he received the bill at $60,000, he balked and disparaged her privately.

“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” The Atlantic reported Trump had said, according to attendees and notes taken by a participant. He turned to his then chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” Trump said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

Trump never covered the cost of the funeral as he had promised. Regarding the reported vulgarity Trump had shouted about Guillén, a Trump spokesperson issued a denial: “President Donald Trump never said that. This is an outrageous lie from The Atlantic two weeks before the election.” 

(Narrator: Trump said it.)

“He didn’t want to be seen with them.”

Kelly also confirmed prior reporting about how Trump held disabled veterans in deep disdain and did not want to be viewed together with them in public, particularly if they had lost limbs on the battlefield. Said Kelly,

“Certainly his not wanting to be seen with amputee—amputees that lost their limbs in defense of this country fighting for every American, him included, to protect them, but didn’t want to be seen with them. That’s an interesting perspective for the commander in chief to have.

He would just say: ‘Look, it just doesn’t look good for me.’”

You can hear Kelly in his own words about Trump and amputees at around the 1:51 mark. 

This follows accounts from Trump’s own nephew, Fred Trump, who told People Magazine about Trump’s attitude toward his disabled son:

In one shocking excerpt from the book that immediately made headlines, Fred, 61, claims that Donald, 78, once told him to “just let [William] die” due to the cost of care, even after Fred brought advocates to the Oval Office to discuss how the government should be more supportive of disabled people and their families.

It is part of fascist ideology that those considered weak, disabled or infirm are a burden upon, and of limited value to, society and therefore ought to be shunted aside, hidden away or even, in the case of Nazi Germany, outright killed. 

Trump’s campaign once again denied the account, but those denials keep racking up. No one in their right mind should believe that everyone else in Trump’s circle is lying rather than the disgraced serial liar himself.

(Narrator: You get the picture.)

“Kelly has beclowned himself”

The Trump campaign was out quickly with a blanket denial of Kelly’s revelations, claiming that “Kelly has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated.”

But Kelly has zero reason to make these stories up, and they are consistent with all past reporting on Trump.

As an initial matter, Kelly was one of the people closest to Trump during his presidency, having served as his Secretary of Homeland Security and then as his longtime chief of staff. Kelly didn’t write a book or take a gig on a news network, so he had no financial incentive to come forward. Indeed, by speaking out as he has, Kelly has put his future and even his own life at risk, because if Trump regains the White House, Trump will likely seek political retribution.

Otherwise put, Kelly has no incentive to fabricate stories, and he has come forward only reluctantly because Trump has grown so extreme.

Others who know and have long worked with Kelly vouch for him. Former U.N. Ambassador under Trump, John Bolton, for example, said of Kelly to Kaitlin Collins on CNN, “You can take what John says to the bank. If John says that Donald Trump said them, then I believe them implicitly.”

Let’s not forget that there are now two high ranking generals who have openly warned Trump is a fascist, with Kelly joining former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley to say so outright. Indeed, Milley has called Trump “the most dangerous person in the country.” This is an extraordinary development, given the military’s standard, non-political position.

Should Trump win reelection, both generals are likely on his list of enemies from within. And as for Trump the fascist, Hitler-loving dictator, we can’t say we weren’t amply warned.