Frankly, we already knew Trump admired Hitler
In the perennial race to state the obvious (in a good way) comes a new book by senior White House reporter Michael C. Bender, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election.” In case you’re wondering who is meant by “we” the book comes with a handy explanatory subtitle, “The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.” And as long as Mr. Bender is stating righteous but obvious truths, the book tells about the time Donald Trump told John Kelly how much he admired Hitler.
Of course Trump admires Hitler. After demonstrating a plethora of times how much he admired and envied the likes of Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Kim Jong un, it was a short but conspicuous step to Hitler, was it not? After all, what’s the point of loving murderous tyrants and psychopaths if you’re going to leave out Der Fuhrer? That wouldn’t be terribly consistent, now would it?
The story goes that John Kelly was explaining to the 45th president who the allies and adversaries were in both World Wars. When he’d finished, Trump said, “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.” According to Bender Kelly was stunned by Trump’s comment and disputed it. Kelly said, “Even if it was true that he was solely responsible for rebuilding the economy, on balance you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler, you just can’t.” Bender wrote that “others said the remark stunned Kelly.”
Though the official response from Mar-a-Lago read like something written by Trump, it was enunciated by new Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington: “This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.”
What makes the book’s claim credible (not that it isn’t already obviously the kind of thing Trump would say) was the accompanying observation that “others said the remark stunned Kelly.” In other words there were others in the room when Kelly said it so the comment will almost certainly be corroborated.
I’m with most of you reading this article just now, brothers and sisters. The comment needs no corroboration. In fact what would stun me would be to learn that Trump despised Hitler or constantly used him as an example of an evil person. Of course Trump revered Hitler. If it isn’t obvious to everyone by now then they haven’t been paying attention. The rather touching part to the whole anecdote is that Kelly was stunned in the first place. It lends him an almost charming naïveté or, in the words of Orwell, “a saving stupidity.”
Bender’s book also details how Trump’s language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle and Portland heated up. Trump would comment during videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters that he wanted to see more of that behavior. “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump said, “Crack their skulls!”
Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out of” the civil rights protesters. Predictably Liz Harrington told CNN that this claim in the book is “false” as well. Again, the claims are easy to corroborate, not that we need corroboration. Trump has said on video many, many times how he supports brutal violence against protesters. It’s an unsurprisingly Trumpian thing for him to say, and it staggers belief that Trump’s puppet would agree to draw attention to it by commenting on it at all.
Bender joins the cascade of new books, probable bestsellers all, that will document every aspect of corruption and incompetence resulting from the festering pirate ship known as the Trump administration. It’s an almost inexhaustible supply of what we already know but even still must never stop hearing lest we do the unthinkable and fail, this time, to learn from history. Bender’s book is out July 13th. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.