In his new book The Return of Great Powers, which comes out Tuesday, reporter Jim Sciutto interviews several of Trump’s former advisers. All of them stressed that Trump regularly lavished praise on authoritarian leaders around the world, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “fantastic,” Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant,” and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un an “OK guy.”
Horrifyingly, Trump also said, “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” according to John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019.
“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. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly told Sciutto. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”
Kelly said that Trump also praised Hitler for achieving complete loyalty from senior Nazi officials—and Trump expected similar fealty from the retired generals he brought on to his cabinet.
“He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly said. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal—that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”
“Hitler did some good things” would end absolutely anyone else’s campaign in America. And this guy still has a chance of winning.
lavished praise
OK guy
…is everything alright at home, article author?
Ah yes, the “hitler was good for the economy” bullshit. Even if you’d ignore all the atrocities (which you shouldn’t), fact is that the outcome was a country in ruins.
And Hitler’s economic plan was always based on stealing resources from other countries through war, because else the country’s spending was unsustainable.
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You’re stealing my bit, man!
Hey I’ve got a list of things I like about Hitler too! Lemme read them off to you…
- Some of his paintings are decent
- He killed Hitler
…
Wait sorry that was the entire list
I wouldn’t go that far with number one. I’d say his paintings were not unskilled, but pretty boring.
Surely the guy who killed Hitler must be a hero, no?
. 3. He’s dead
His ex-wife Ivana said in their divorce hearings that he kept Mein Kampf on his bedside table. Very believable, but perhaps he had it just as a token since I’m not convinced he can really read.
since I’m not convinced he can really read.
It’s the illustrated version with the big boy toy gun.
He’s a complete fucking nong, but he’s not that stupid that he can’t read.
A bit of an exaggeration, sure. I suppose if he was motivated by something he truly loves like Hitler, he could sit down and read a book.
Not a chance. You can’t have it both ways, and there’s no way he had the patience to read an old book. He didn’t read intelligence briefings specifically made for him.
I promise you’d be surprised what being interested in a topic can do. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about intelligence briefings. But a book by a genocidal dictator? Now that will really pique his interest.
If it isn’t true that Donald Trump mostly reads Harlequin romance novels, it will still now be my headcanon.
True. Most of the time he’s simply not interested in reading
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-tariffs-eu-colorful-cards-2018-7
Being able to and wanting to, being practised in reading and actually understanding what you read are probably very different things. Some people decided that colorful flash cards work best with him. The news articles about him not reading his briefing materials but looking at the pictures are also out there. I think he reads everything that comes in the size of a flash card or a tweet, much longer than that and I have my doubts.
I think they meant anything longer than a tweet or a newspaper article about himself. We know how his officials had to dumb down every briefing for him because he never read anything ahead of time and had a hard time in general comprehending basic topics.
He seems to have a problem reading teleprompters, the easiest thing to read since the invention of books in large print.
Part of that might be due to his refusal to wear his glasses in public.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-seen-wearing-glasses_n_5e1eac25c5b63211760b28cb
Was it Mein Kampf or a book of Hitler’s speeches? I’ve heard both.
Here’s the fun part. Ivana said it was Hitler speeches. Trump says it might have been Mein Kampf.
What a kamikaze of a defense…
More of a blitzkrieg, he’s hoping to prevail through the use of shock tactics and being overwhelmingly offensive.
Hmm you might be right. And if 2016 has taught us anything: it might work.
I do like how Kim is just “an OK guy”
It’s a pretty big step up from “Little Rocket Man” though.
My memory of that little fight is that Kim came out sounding much more sane than Trump did. Which is REALLY saying something.
But then they got together and made up, and Kim probably promised him that abandoned hotel, and suddenly they were best friends.
I don’t know, Little Rocket Man does indicate a more complex vocabulary. If anything “OK guy” signals some mental decline.
I just meant in terms of praise or insult.
Well that’s true.
Kim probably complained that Trump used too much teeth.
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That would be thanks to Hugo Boss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss#Manufacturing_for_the_Nazi_Party
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The Fashion of The Fuhrer sounds like a great musical.
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It’s even better, thanks to the alliteration.
Is it his orange skin and impeccable hair?
Y’know on first glance I thought this article was from The Onion but no…
I could build a good economy too, if I redistributed wealth while saddling an entire ethnic/religious demographic with debt, forcing them in to slavery and excluding them from economic statistics. Oh, and make meth legal for the workforce.
Seizing the assets of a vast number of people is indeed a great way to prop up your economy even before you decide to use them as slave labor.
And that’s already legal in America! Hooray!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States
The thingy is, it wasn’t that good of an economy outside of the war industry. People paid for car IOUs that would build tanks, but they never got the cars. Compared to east Germany that eventually got the cars.
Yeah but those cars were Ladas
More likely Trabants or, for the elite, Wartburgs.
I, too, have a list of things I love about Adolf Hitler:
- He’s long dead
- He ruined that stupid mustache for all time
3. He killed Hitler
But TBF he was also killed by Hitler, so I think that one’s a draw.
Best thing he ever did, tbh.
To be fair, Hitler was a more talented painter than Trump is a businessman. A biiiiiiiig /s.
Hitler was a legitimately shitty painter. Also, you’re correct.
A biiiiiiiig /s.
I mean yeah… but also you’re not wrong.
Just want to make sure that I am not glorifying Adolf here. :).
Hitler also killed Hitler. Maybe Trump should aspire to reach that level of commitment to the role.
Kanye is his ghostwriter
Not that anyone would expect Trump to know this, but Hitler rebuilding the economy was kind of a fraud. He basically used fake currency (before it was cool), banned unions and made it nearly impossible to quit a job, and stole from a big chunk of Germany’s own population and those surrounding it. Ordinary Germans saw a decline in their real wages by 25% from 1933 to 1938, and obviously things only got worse from there.
That actually is the core Nazi ideology. Honest work building something up by the rules is not cool, means weakness and degeneracy. Fraud and robbery is cool, means strength and cunning. But at the same time putting yourself into something sacrificial is cool too. “We do not sow” and all that.
So it was fraud, but I think most of the Germans loyal to that ideology understood that emotionally.
Many people in the Middle East and Africa have such worldview today.
Additionally many undesirable people were forced out of high skill jobs or had their business taken away. Robbing businesses of effective managers and workers. Leading to loss of productivity and a fall in GDP.
Both Nazi Germany and post war divided Germany made for very interesting natural experiments in economics. Weirdly because it would be unethical to do them as a controlled studying…
“You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.” - Norm Macdonald
I didn’t even know he was sick.
