In a sane world, this would be the “October surprise” that would end Donald Trump’s latest presidential bid.
The headline in The Atlantic says it all: “TRUMP: ‘I NEED THE KIND OF GENERALS THAT HITLER HAD’”
The story doesn’t go there right away, but eases the reader in with another horrible Trump story. After personally promising the family of murdered Army soldier Vanessa Guillen that he would help pay for her funeral, he lost his mind when he found out the final cost was $60,000.
“Trump became angry. ‘It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!’” wrote The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: ‘Don’t pay it!’ Later that day, he was still agitated. ‘Can you believe it?’ he said, according to a witness. ‘Fucking people, trying to rip me off.’”
But the main course is Trump’s admiration for the kind of loyalty that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler engendered from his military brass.
White House chief of staff John Kelly listens as Donald Trump speaks at a briefing with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Oct. 5, 2017.
In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.
This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.
Kelly had to literally tell Trump to stop saying nice things about Hitler:
“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” Kelly recalled. “I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, (Hitler) rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world.” Kelly admonished Trump: “I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”
