Former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021) believes that the German dictator Adolf Hitler did “good things” for his country and that the Hungarian ultranationalist Viktor Orbán is “fantastic,” said Jim Sciutto this Tuesday, who includes the statements in his recently published book ‘The Return of Great Powers’.
The author confirmed on the media’s website that retired general John Kelly leaked those comments to him. Kelly was Trump’s chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019.
“He said, ‘But Hitler did some good things.’ I said that?’ And he said, ‘Well, he rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about that guy.’ Nothing,’” Kelly said.
The president’s admiration is not limited to Hitler. According to his former right-hand man, Trump praised his officers’ loyalty to him.
Regarding Orbán, with whom he recently met at his mansion in Mar-a-Lago (Florida), he also believes that “there is no better or smarter leader”: “He is the boss, a great leader, a fantastic leader. They respect him in Europe and in the world,” he would have said.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, did not want to comment on the statements, but in his response to the journalist he recommended Kelly seek professional help “because his hatred is consuming his empty life.”
‘Trump ignores the Holocaust’: Biden
Who has spoken out is the campaign of the Democratic president, Joe Biden, and the vice president, Kamala Harris.
“Today’s information confirms that Trump is ignoring the Holocaust and the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost in World War II to praise one of the most notorious dictators in history. “This is not leadership: it is a betrayal of our values,” he said in a statement.
For one of its spokespersons, Sarafina Chitika, these praises for Hitler are “shameful, but not at all surprising.”
“They come from a man who has repeated Nazi rhetoric on numerous occasions during the election campaign, has called his political opponents ‘vermin’ and has heaped praise on dictators and authoritarian ‘leaders’ like Vladimir Putin, Orbán and Kim Jong Un, among others. When he talks like a dictator, praises dictators and says he wants to be a dictator, we should probably believe him,” Chitika concluded.
