Not Even Fox News Can Defend Trump’s Latest Hitler Comments

Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade may have pulled a muscle while bending over backward to justify Donald Trump’s request for loyal, Nazi-like generals.

As his presidency came to a close, Trump said that he needed “the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders,” two people present during the private conversation in the White House told The Atlantic.

Trump also asked his former chief of staff John Kelly, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Kelly had to explain to Trump that Hitler’s generals unsuccessfully tried to kill the Nazi leader three times, but Trump, unconvinced, falsely insisted, “They were totally loyal to him.”

On Fox & Friends Wednesday morning, Kilmeade tried desperately to make it OK. He argued Trump was simply trying to express a desire to be obeyed.

“Play this out: If your general, who’s your chief of staff and your secretary of defense, is not doing what you say on an everyday basis, I could see him going, ‘I’d love generals that listened, that would be great,’” Kilmeade said, according to The Daily Beast.

Kilmeade claimed that Kelly and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, both retired generals, “didn’t like the president” and worked to ensure that many of Trump’s requests “never got done.” Kilmeade also tried to argue that Trump was predisposed toward fascism because of his experience getting his way in the business world.

“He’s also from a world where his company is huge, but it’s a family company. When he asked Eric [Trump] or somebody to do something, they’d do it,” Kilmeade said.

“It’s not even publicly traded, he doesn’t have board members, and all of a sudden now he’s like, ‘Do this. What do you mean, you can’t do it?’

“He obviously had frustration,” Kilmeade continued. “And I can absolutely see him go, ‘It’d be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever.”

Kilmeade argued that Trump was not aware that German generals unquestioningly carrying out orders to commit mass slaughter for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler were, in fact, Nazis. Instead, Kilmeade suggested it was all hyperbolic, that Trump “was frustrated with the slowdown—”

“It wasn’t just a slowdown, it was insubordination,” interjected host Lawrence B. Jones, taking his turn to defend Trump’s authoritarian statements.

Donald Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita can’t come up with a good explanation for all his posts after the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, blaming Trump for the violence of that day.

In the immediate aftermath of the riots, several Republicans criticized Trump for fueling the protesters violently attempting to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. Chris LaCivita was among them, sharing comments on X (Twitter at the time) calling January 6 an insurrection fueled by Trump’s lies about the election, CNN reports. 

LaCivita shared several reposts condemning Trump for January 6, including former President George W. Bush’s statement expressing “disbelief and dismay” and calling the unrest at the Capitol “a sickening and heartbreaking sight.” LaCivita later deleted this post, along with several others, but CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski was able to find them on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

CNN also saw a video of a screen recording showing that LaCivita liked a post from former Republican Representative Barbara Comstock, who called for Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and remove him from office.

“Twitter locked @realDonaldTrump for 12 hours. Now the Cabinet needs to lock him down for the next 14 days. #25thAmendmentNow,” Comstock’s post on the evening of January 6 read.

LaCivita also shared a post from a Republican Senate aide, John McCormack, who at the time was a reporter for the conservative magazine National Review.

“Text message from a GOP Senate aide: ‘This is a disgusting tragedy. Someone literally lost their life because of a lie that Trump told, Cruz/Hawley capitalized on, and fringe media echoed. This is in no way shape or form sustainable,’” McCormack’s post read, referring to Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who were supporting Trump’s claim that he hadn’t lost the election.

LaCivita also reposted, and later deleted, a comment from a Republican political staffer calling the people who stormed the Capitol “thugs,” quoting a tweet from CNN about the breach of the Capitol.

Trump’s campaign manager didn’t deny making the posts and reposts in a statement to CNN but said, “Retweets and likes are not endorsements.

“I’m focused on winning the election two weeks from now, and not distractions from CNN,” his statement read.

All of his posts show that LaCivita, like many other Republicans, saw the Capitol riots as very damaging for the country and the GOP. But today, these criticisms have been memory-holed, as the Republican Party and Trump’s fervent supporters have sought to downplay, whitewash, and even defend the events of January 6.

Along with 2020 election denial, ignoring the riots has even become a litmus test of supporting Trump in his campaign for president. With the 2024 election only days away, how will LaCivita and the rest of Trump’s campaign react if there’s another violent attempt to overturn the election?

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton doesn’t agree that Donald Trump is a “fascist”—but only because he’s not as “capable” as some of history’s greatest villains.

During an interview with CNN’s The Source on Tuesday, Bolton pushed back on recent comments made by Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who said that Trump fit the definition of a fascist.

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” Kelly, a retired military general, said. “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

Bolton, in turn, described Trump’s behavior as “troubling” but not thoughtful enough to constitute a legitimate philosophy.

“I think it’s a mistake to get into a controversy over whether Trump meets the definition of fascist or not,” Bolton told CNN.

“I think his behavior alone is troubling enough,” he continued. “To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy. Trump’s not capable of that.”

Bolton, who also served in Ronald Reagan’s administration, then went on to drag Trump’s mental fortitude, claiming that the MAGA leader could never flesh out his movement like Hitler due to his alleged inability to finish a book.

“You know, Adolf Hitler wrote a profoundly troubling book called Mein Kampf, ‘My Struggle.’ Donald Trump couldn’t even read his way all the way through that book, let alone write something like it,” Bolton argued.

“I’m not trying to understate the dangers of a Trump presidency. I think it’s important to focus on the dangers themselves.”

The Republican presidential nominee and his former foreign policy hawk have publicly butted heads several times since Bolton was ousted from Trump’s administration in 2019. Over the last year, the ex-ally has relentlessly grilled Trump for wanting to pull out of NATO. In February, Bolton claimed that Trump had completely fabricated a story in which he allegedly told a European leader that he’d allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies if they didn’t “pay” their “bills.”

Both candidates in the presidential race are after the young male vote—but getting the demographic to side with Donald Trump is apparently a lot trickier than capturing key endorsements from characters such as Elon Musk.

A new poll by Democratic pollster Blueprint 2024 that surveyed young men between the ages of 18 and 29 across the nation found that Musk’s endorsement had actually done more harm than good for the Republican presidential nominee.

Roughly 70 percent of male voters were aware that Musk had endorsed the former president shortly after Trump survived an assassination attempt near Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. And while 24 percent of the men surveyed said that Musk’s endorsement skewed their perspective toward Trump in a positive way, slightly more—28 percent—said it actually made them less likely to support Trump, according to the poll. Approximately 45 percent of respondents said Musk’s stance on Trump had no impact on their opinion.

That’s despite the fact that Musk has gone deliberately out of his way to court young men for the MAGA leader’s cause. Through his Trump-focused America PAC, Musk has effectively promised a political bribe, offering to raffle away $1 million to one registered swing state voter per day, every day until Election Day.

“We want to try to get over a million, maybe two million voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment.… We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election,” Musk said last week.

Democrats have roundly criticized the initiative, with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro describing Musk’s initiative as “deeply concerning” and “something that law enforcement should take a look at.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chimed in on the issue at a Democratic event on Sunday, arguing that “Elon Musk thinks your vote can be bought.”

McDonald’s share price just hit its lowest point since Covid. It might not be completely Donald Trump’s fault—but we can’t say that he helped at all.

After Trump’s desperate stunt at the fast-food franchise on Sunday afternoon, McDonald’s suffered a double blow to the golden arches brand. On Tuesday, news broke that an E. coli outbreak related to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders is spreading in multiple states (notably not yet in Pennsylvania, where Trump held his staged photo op).

One person has died from the outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and hospitalizations have been reported across 10 states.

In response to the double whammy, McDonald’s stock, which began dropping the day after Trump’s visit, is down 19 percent on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Trump Media stock continues to fluctuate and even surge, despite the company appearing to fall apart at the seams after hitting a new low last month. Experts say that the share price is less of a measure of the health of the business, which again is not good, and more “a barometer for both Trump and Trump’s followers,” Kristi Marvin, a former investment banker, told The New York Times. “This stock has never traded on fundamentals.”

Trump’s media company continues to lose tens of millions each quarter, and senior management are dropping like flies, despite the stock fluctuations. For a comparison to demonstrate just how much of a failure Trump’s company is, let’s put it into perspective: Trump Media’s quarterly revenue is less than that of a single McDonald’s franchise.

While McDonald’s stock will probably rebound, if investors can begin to see clearly, Trump’s businesses may not be so lucky.