Harris Calls Trump A Fascist Unfit for Office
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - US Vice President Kamala Harris called former US President Donald Trump a “fascist” at a CNN town hall Wednesday in Pennsylvania — echoing his onetime chief of staff's criticism as she makes a more vocal pitch to voters that he is unfit for office.
John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general who was Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, came forward this week to warn that his former boss meets “the general definition of a fascist." And he said that in private conversations, Trump admired dictators and said he wished he had military generals as loyal as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's, NBC News reported.
Harris said Kelly’s comments, coming just two weeks before the election, are “a 911 call to the American people.”
“We must take very seriously those folks who knew him best,” she continued, referring to the numerous former Trump advisers who have broken with him and warned the public that he should not be trusted with power again.
“Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?” host Anderson Cooper asked Harris.
“Yes, I do. Yes, I do,” she replied.
Later, she used the word herself to refer to Trump for the first time in public, saying voters care about “not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
“I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous,” she continued. “As the president of the United States, the commander in chief, he’s saying to his generals, in essence, why can’t you be more like Hitler’s generals? Come on!”
Harris has more forcefully been arguing in recent days that Trump is unfit for office. On Wednesday, after Kelly's remarks became public, she gave remarks to emphasize them and criticize Trump.
Trump posted to X and Truth Social moments after the town hall ended, arguing that Harris "sees that she is losing," so she "is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind."
In his social media post, Trump did not directly respond to Harris' calling him a "fascist."
With less than two weeks until Election Day, polls show a deadlocked race, with analysts saying it is essentially a coin-flip, with each battleground state able to flip either way.