John Kelly reportedly had to warn Trump not to 'say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler'

Former President Donald Trump praised Adolf Hitler to his former chief of staff in 2018, saying he “did a lot of good things,” according to “Frankly, We Did Win This Election,” a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender that is scheduled to be released next week.

The Guardian reports that, during a trip to Europe to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, according to Bender, Trump cited as an example of a “good thing” Germany’s economic recovery in the 1930s. Bender writes, “Kelly pushed back again and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide” and notes that Kelly told Trump, “You cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can’t.”

Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington told the Guardian, “This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made-up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.”

This would not be the first time that Trump had made comments supportive or admiring of Nazis or others on the extreme far right, nor his first antisemitic comments.

In 2017, just a week after Trump was inaugurated, the White House’s statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day raised eyebrows due to its complete failure to mention Jews.

In August of that year, after neo-Nazis marched at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” Trump refused to condemn them, instead saying, “You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

In 2019, during an appearance at the Israeli American Council in Hollywood, Florida, Trump peddled stereotypes about Jews, greed, and wealth. After telling the crowd, “We have to get them to love Israel more, because we have people that are Jewish people that are great people — they don’t love Israel enough,” Trump said:

A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me—you have no choice. You’re not gonna vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away! Some of you don’t like me. Some of you I don’t like at all, actually. And you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’re going to be out of business in about 15 minutes if they get it. So I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that.

Just last month, he repeated the comment that American Jews “don’t love Israel enough.”