“Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired four-star general, confirmed that while Donald Trump was president, he said he wanted ‘generals like Adolf Hitler had,’” Vice President Kamala Harris said in an impromptu appearance on Wednesday. “Donald Trump said that because he does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution. He wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a military who will be loyal to him personally, one that will obey his orders even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States.”
It is the latest sign that Harris plans to make Trump’s fitness for office a major theme of her presidential campaign in the days leading up to the election, with an address planned early next week in Washington on the Ellipse that is being billed as her “closing argument.”
This is a departure for Harris, who had moved away from a heavy focus on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot after replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Many Democrats feared Biden and top aide Mike Donilon were misreading the electorate by framing the election as a defense of democracy even before the June 27 debate chased the president out of the race. Biden’s camp was adamant that this issue helped prevent bigger losses for their party in the 2022 midterm elections.
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Harris, however, is turning to Trump’s temperament and potential to abuse government power as she tries to reach the last undecided voters. Many of these voters are skeptical of Harris and dissatisfied with Biden’s performance in office, but also have fears of what might happen if Trump is returned to the White House.
Perhaps after focusing on the economy, joy, and positive vibes, Harris can now get late deciders to break against Trump by raising these concerns. Harris also needs to bring down Trump’s favorability ratings, which are generally higher than in 2016 or 2020, and in one Gallup poll are higher than her own.
But the change in messaging, like Harris’s sudden resort to major media interviews in the closing weeks of the campaign, raises questions about whether Democrats fear they are now losing the race.
The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Biden agrees with Kelly’s characterization of his former boss, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, as a fascist.
“Well, looking 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 told the New York Times. “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”
There are risks inherent in embracing Kelly’s October surprise and running a reductio ad Hitlerum campaign less than two weeks out from Election Day. The biggest is that it is not a promise to economically beleaguered voters that they will materially benefit from a Harris presidency.
The second is that a bipartisan establishment full-court press, with Harris enlisting everyone from Kelly to Liz Cheney, against Trump appears to confirm what many of his supporters already believe. Why, they ask, wouldn’t the deep state rig the election against the second coming of Hitler?
Unlike when Biden first took up the mantle of opposing MAGA fascism, Trump has been the subject of two assassination attempts. In the first one in Butler, Pennsylvania, the former president was actually shot in the ear.
The lateness of this message also could appear cynical to voters. Harris has been happily campaigning alongside celebrities, smiling and joking, since leapfrogging Biden. Is that the proper way to run against a possible fascist takeover?
Trump has also already been president. While Jan. 6 is clearly an event that happened and will dissuade a certain number of voters from supporting him again, the military did not persecute Democrats and journalists during his first term.
A key question is whether there are enough remaining voters who share this level of anxiety about Trump who are not already in Harris’s camp. Harris’s campaign is behaving as if they believe this can be answered in the affirmative.
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“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable. In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions,” Harris said. “Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there to rein him in.”
“He called it what it is,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters after Biden used the term “semifascist” in 2022. “Many historians would agree with us.”