MAGA’s Latest Defense of Trump’s Hitler Comments Is the Wildest Yet

In just a handful of hours, Donald Trump’s MAGA allies have gone from arguing that his recent comments about Hitler were misconstrued to just outright claiming that the whole story was completely made up.

During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Florida Representative Mike Waltz completely rejected the evidence of his eyes and ears, claiming that the Republican presidential nominee’s comments praising Hitler and expecting undying loyalty from his top commanders were phony.

“It doesn’t make sense to me. I find the timing suspicious,” Waltz said.

“And it just completely is divorced from the man that I’ve come to know in Donald Trump, and how he’s dealt with Gold Star families, how he has been caring, how he’s been compassionate,” Waltz continued, referring to the military status given to families who have lost a loved one during their military service.

The far-right revision comes after Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, retired military General John Kelly, told The Atlantic that his ex-boss fit the description of a fascist. Kelly recalled a disturbing exchange he had with the former president while he was still in office, in which Trump expressed frustration over a perceived lack of loyalty from the military.

“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two sources that spoke anonymously with The Atlantic. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

Another time, while in a frustrated discussion with Kelly, Trump reportedly asked, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” forgetting that Hitler’s top generals had themselves defied him and made several attempts toward the end of World War II to kill him. Kelly, trying to correct the president, informed him that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.”

Kelly recounted that when Trump had raised the matter of “German generals,” he responded by asking, “Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?”

“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?’” Kelly told The Atlantic. “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.”

But Trump did not know who Rommel was, either.

It’s at least the second time this month that Waltz has rejected the reality of Trump’s rhetoric. Last week, Waltz refused to acknowledge that direct quotes from Trump’s “enemy from within” comments were actually what he said.

“I don’t think that’s what he said, John,” Waltz told CNN host John Berman, before pointing to civil unrest and mass protests during 2020. “I think that’s completely appropriate, the National Guard was rolled out then.… We cannot have, nor should we have, riots in the streets, business owners threatened, and Americans feeling unsafe.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, tried to pay a Washington Post reporter a hefty $500,000 to kill a profile she was writing on the Silicon Valley billionaire.

The reporter didn’t respond to the offer, and the Post published its profile of Shanahan Wednesday morning, where the attempted bribe was revealed. Shanahan made the offer in June, texting one of her associates who was contacted by the Post that she would “pay your friend,” referring to the reporter, “half a million dollars to be a whistleblower” and name the sources for the story.

In making the offer, Shanahan claimed that the sources were spreading false information about her. Shanahan would not respond to multiple requests from the Post beginning in April to sit for an interview, and ultimately the newspaper sent her a list of questions. Shanahan answered that she didn’t agree with some of the Post’s reporting but didn’t provide answers to any of the questions. The Post’s story details Shanahan’s evolution from a Democrat to a MAGA star praised by the likes of Tucker Carlson.

“I’m so sorry you feel it is appropriate to do this for political motivations,” Shanahan told the Post. “It’s a very sad state our country is in.”

Kennedy drew headlines when he announced Shanahan as his running mate in March. Many suspected that he chose her due to her wealth and the fact that she was Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s ex-wife. Later revelations showed that she has extreme views on in vitro fertilization and that she shares Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines, using the example of her autistic daughter as proof of their danger.

In August, she and Kennedy dropped their independent presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, spearheading a “Make America Healthy Again” initiative to back the former president. Such a wealthy benefactor supporting Trump signals that she might be involved in his administration if he wins the election, and doesn’t bode well for public health in America, either. The fact that she tried to bribe a reporter means she shares the former president’s lack of ethics.

Donald Trump’s supporters are angry over an article that isn’t even real—and they keep spreading it online.

At issue is an image circulating online appearing to be a screenshot of an article from The Atlantic with the headline “Trump Is Literally Hitler,” distorting an article published Tuesday with the headline “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had.’”

The Atlantic published a press release Wednesday refuting the existence of an article with the headline reading “Trump Is Literally Hitler,” after MAGA fans wouldn’t stop sharing it on social media, including Trump’s wealthiest fan, X CEO Elon Musk, who got hit with the Community Notes feature on the platform he owns.

Utah Senator Mike Lee also shared the screenshot before deleting it later.

Several other right-wing influencers jumped on too.

The screenshot appears to have been a creation of X user Indian_Bronson, who admitted it was a fake in a follow-up post. As the election draws closer, it’s not surprising that fake news is being shared and picking up steam on social media. It’s not the first time that Musk has shared false information that supports his political views either, and it’s probably not the last.

In this case, X’s Community Notes feature and The Atlantic caught the screenshot, but not before it got millions of views. In the next two weeks, how bad will the misinformation be, and will it be corrected quickly enough?

A new Trumpian super PAC has hit the market—just in time for its donor details to remain secret until after the November election.

The America First Action Fund was organized on October 18, just late enough in the game to skirt donor disclosures until after Election Day, independent journalist Roger Sollenberger reported Wednesday. The move will prevent any transparency around exactly which individuals are fueling Trump’s campaign this late in election season.

The freshly minted super PAC is tied to two separate dark money groups by way of its treasurer, Ashley Hayek, a 2020 Trump campaign staffer who also serves as the executive director of America First Works and the chief engagement officer of the America First Policy Institute.

That latter group, like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, is one of several in the running to offer staff picks and transition roadmaps for a potential second term under Donald Trump.

But as a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit, America First Policy Institute can’t formally support a candidate for office. Instead, it’s been quietly focused on driving some of Trump’s chief policy goals, including deregulating the federal government. America First Policy Institute received Trump’s blessing even before it was founded in 2021, reported Politico.

“For three and a half years, AFPI has focused on personnel and policy. It was formed by and is teeming with senior staffers from the first Trump Administration whose goal is to be ready on day one,” Kellyanne Conway, the former Trump adviser who chairs AFPI’s Center for the American Child, told Politico in August. “Linda McMahon, Brooke Rollins and the team have planned with precision and executed with put-your-head-down type humility.”

Hit dogs holler. Marjorie Taylor Greene is spinning out about Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledging comments from John Kelly that Donald Trump is a Hitler-loving fascist.

Harris responded Wednesday to two damning reports from The New York Times and The Atlantic, in which Trump’s former chief of staff recalled Trump’s  praise of Hitler and his desire to have generals like the Nazi leader did. After Harris dared bring up Kelly’s remarks, Greene accused Harris of trying to get Trump killed.

“Vice President Kamala Harris is desperate, dangerous, and lying about President Trump,” the Georgia representative wrote on X.

You would think that Harris had just told Democrats to “stand back and stand by,” based on Greene’s description of the vice president’s spontaneous address. But Harris’s comments were simple and without dramatization.

“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” said Harris in her address, responding to Kelly’s allegations. “Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions.”

In the Times interview Tuesday, Kelly called Trump a “fascist” who would regularly praise Hitler and other dictators. Also on Tuesday, The Atlantic reported that two sources confirmed the Republican candidate declared, near the end of his term, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

Greene will speak with Trump at a rally in Duluth, Georgia, Wednesday night alongside Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and more in the nightmare lineup.

At the campaign event, expect more whining about the attacks on her favorite president.