With 13 days to go until the election, Kamala Harris laid out in the starkest terms possible the choice Americans face when they head to the ballot box in less than two weeks: They can vote to elect a man who thinks Adolph Hilter is someone to emulate, or they can vote for a woman who has never said a good thing about a genocidal maniac.
Speaking outside the Naval Observatory on Wednesday, Harris responded to a new story from The Atlantic detailing Donald Trump’s infatuation with dictators, the negative things he has allegedly had to say about members of the armed forces, and the positive remarks he has allegedly made about people like Hitler, all of which he of course denies.
“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,” Harris told reporters. “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.”
She continued: “And let’s be clear about who he considers to be the enemy from within. Anyone who refuses to bend a knee or dares to criticize him would qualify, in his mind, as the enemy within, like judges, like journalists, like nonpartisan election officials. It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room.”
Harris added that Kelly has said Trump meets the definition of a fascist, and would rule like one if given the chance. The vice president ended her remarks by telling voters: “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. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in.
“So, the bottom line is this. We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be: What do the American people want?”