Kamala Harris cited news reports that said Trump praised Hitler. She did not call him Hitler.

A day after Vice President Kamala Harris called former President Donald Trump "increasingly unhinged and unstable," he retorted and accused her of calling him Adolf Hitler.

"Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the Race from Crooked Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind," the Republican presidential nominee wrote on X and Truth Social Oct. 23.

Harris did not call Trump Hitler. The Democratic presidential nominee drew attention to recent statements from John Kelly, a retired four-star U.S. Marine Corps general and Trump’s former chief of staff. Kelly told The New York Times in recorded interviews that Trump made admiring comments about the Nazi dictator and his control of the German military.

Following the Times report, Trump called Kelly a "total degenerate" and said he "made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred." Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump campaign spokesman, told PolitiFact that Kelly’s statements about Trump’s Hitler comments were "absolutely false."

Under Hitler’s leadership, Nazi Germany, its allies and collaborators killed 6 million Jewish people in a state-sponsored genocide known as the Holocaust. Hitler and his forces also persecuted and killed millions of non-Jewish people during World War II, according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

Since The New York Times published its Oct. 22 story, Harris has referred to Kelly’s statements on a few occasions.

On Oct. 23, Harris gave brief remarks at her Washington, D.C., residence in response to the Times’ reporting. These were her comments; we used bolded text to highlight the relevant portions:

"So, yesterday, we learned that 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.

"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.

"In just the past week, Donald Trump has repeatedly called his fellow Americans the ‘enemy from within’ and even said that he would use the United States military to go after American citizens."

In an Oct. 13 Fox News interview, Trump said he believes "the enemy from within" would cause Election Day chaos and said that, if that happens, the National Guard or military might be used against them. Pressed on whom he identifies as "the enemy," Trump has named leading Democrats and others who disagree with him.

Harris made additional comments about Trump and Hitler in two Oct. 23 X posts. She wrote:

"Donald Trump is out for unchecked power. He wants a military like Adolf Hitler had, who will be loyal to him, not our Constitution. He is unhinged, unstable, and given a second term, there would be no one to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses."

And, "Donald Trump vowed to be a dictator on day one. He vowed to use the military to carry out personal and political vendettas. His former chief of staff said he wanted generals like Hitler’s. Trump wants unchecked power. In 13 days, the American people will decide what they want."

During her Oct. 23 CNN town hall with host Anderson Cooper in suburban Philadelphia, Harris again referred to The New York Times report and Kelly’s remarks, saying she believed they showed that Trump is not fit to serve as president.

"John Kelly, the former chief of staff of Donald Trump, who has told us Donald Trump said, why — essentially, ‘why aren't my generals like those of Hitler's, like Hitler?’ who has referred, several times — we've heard the reports for years," she said.

Later, when Cooper asked Harris whether she would be more pro-Israel than Trump, Harris cited the comments again: 

"I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous. I believe that, when you have a president of the United States who has said to his generals, who work for him because he is commander in chief — these conversations, I assume many of them took place in the Oval Office — If the president of the United States, the commander in chief, is saying to his generals, in essence, ‘Why can't you be more like Hitler's generals?’ Anderson, come on. This is a serious, serious issue.

"The American people deserve to have a president who encourages healthy debate, works across the aisle, not afraid of good ideas wherever they come from, but also maintains certain standards about how we think about the role and the responsibility, and certainly not comparing oneself in a clearly admiring way to Hitler."

During the town hall, Cooper asked Harris whether she thinks Trump is a fascist. The Council on Foreign Relations defines facism as "a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual." 

"Yes, I do. Yes, I do," Harris replied. "And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted."

Harris also said voters "care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist."

For its report, The New York Times recorded three on-the-record interviews with Kelly and included interview audio clips with its article. Kelly was Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff and also served as his Homeland Security secretary. When Trump announced in December 2018 that Kelly would be leaving, news reports said the men’s relationship had deteriorated.

Kelly told the Times that Trump had spoken positively of Hitler: "He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’" Kelly said.

Featured Fact-check

Kamala Harris

stated on October 7, 2024 in an interview

“We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half.”

Kelly also confirmed previous reports about Trump speaking admiringly of Hitler’s military control. The Times linked to a 2022 New Yorker article, drawn from the book "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021," that said:

(Trump’s) loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: "You f------ generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?"

"Which generals?" Kelly asked.

"The German generals in World War II," Trump responded.

"You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?" Kelly said.

The New York Times also cited a 2021 article in The Guardian about a book by Michael Bender, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, who wrote that during a 2018 visit to Europe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Trump said to Kelly: "Well, Hitler did a lot of good things."

When the Times asked Kelly whether Trump is a fascist, Kelly read aloud a definition of fascism and said Trump "falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."

An Oct. 22 story in The Atlantic, also chronicled Trump making statements envious of Hitler’s military power, saying, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had," attributing the information to two people who were not named.

There is one record of someone calling Trump Hitler: Trump’s running mate.

Before becoming Trump’s ally and defender, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, criticized Trump, writing in 2016 that he went "back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a-hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler."

Trump said Harris called him Adolf Hitler.

Harris did not call Trump Hitler. She referred to statements from Trump’s former chief of staff who described to The New York Times instances of Trump speaking admiringly of Hitler and Hitler’s military control. When asked whether she believes Trump is a fascist, she said yes.

We rate this statement False.

RELATED: Live fact-checking Kamala Harris' town hall on CNN