Fox News host Howard Kurtz insists General John Kelly saying Donald Trump told him he wanted “Hitler’s generals” may be a “gift from the gods” for the Harris presidential campaign, but it won’t change many votes because it was said in private. Kurtz also claimed that because Trump survived two assassination attempts his supporters are not about to be “peeled off,” and it’s all just “noise at this point to them.”

After praising Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, as a “highly respected, um, uh four star who lost a son in Afghanistan,” Kurtz Thursday afternoon told Fox News host Martha McCallum, “I don’t believe that [Kelly] is making things up and nobody can really know what the private conversations may have been.”

“However, at the same time,” Kurtz continued, “Trump may have just been letting off steam about the loyalty he wanted from his generals compared to what he thought about Hitler’s generals, and I think that it is obviously not something that was uh, made for public consumption.”

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Kurtz suggested that because there “was not an effort, uh, to say anything publicly” about wanting Hitler’s generals, those “accusations are not gonna move ten votes.”

Kelly this week in interviews has said his former boss, Donald Trump, meets the “definition of a ‘fascist.’” The Associated Press also reported: “Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things.’”

“In his interview with The Atlantic,” The AP reported, “Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ‘German generals,’ Kelly would ask if he meant ‘Bismarck’s generals,’ referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ‘Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,’ Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’”

McCallum suggested to Kurtz that the accusations from General Kelly were “obviously a lot of stuff being uh thrown at the wall here,” but asked also if this could be part of the “so-called October surprises that can sometimes impact elections just 12 days out?”

McCallum stressed that others had claimed Kelly was wrong, and “that they were never said.”

Kurtz did stress he does see Kelly “as a grandstander,” but rather, “concerned and upset.”

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McCallum insisted that as far as the Kelly accusations are concerned, “it speaks to me to the tolerance that people have for the level of story that can rock a presidential election.”

“I mean, we all remember Access Hollywood,” the 2016 October surprise where Donald Trump was caught on tape making now infamous comments about grabbing women by their genitals and how he kisses women with out asking because “when you’re a star they let you do it.”

Kurtz also reassured Fox viewers that many of these “are not new allegations, and I think a lot of people, especially Trump supporters, especially after two assassination attempts have failed, are not gonna be peeled off, uh, by this back and forth. It sounds like noise at this point to them.”

Watch a short clip of the interview below or at this link.

Fox’s Howie Kurtz: “Trump may have just been letting off steam about the loyalty he wanted from his generals compared to what he thought about Hitler’s generals. Obviously not something that was made for public consumption”

h/t @McmasterReed pic.twitter.com/AgczBVqYre

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) October 24, 2024

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Fox News host and anchor Harris Faulkner quickly shut down a Democratic guest as soon as he brought up the name of Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, who this week declared the ex-president meets the “definition of a ‘fascist.'”

General Kelly is far from alone.

Last week, former Trump Chairman of the Join Chiefs, General Mark Milley, said he believes Donald Trump is “fascist to the core,” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” 

And on Wednesday, former Trump Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, The Washington Post reported, agreed with General Kelly that Trump meets the definition of a fascist.

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Esper “said in a CNN interview that he was reluctant to use the same label that Kelly used in a New York Times interview published Tuesday. But Esper then noted that Kelly had looked up the definition of a fascist in the interview — and Esper urged ‘everybody’ to do the same.”

“Ask yourself, does he fall into those categories?” Esper asked. “And it’s hard to say that he doesn’t when you kind of look at those terms. He certainly has those inclinations, and I think it’s something we should be wary about.”

In addition to declaring the ex-president meets the definition of a fascist, General Kelly shared more disturbing details about his time with Trump.

“Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things,’” The Associated Press reported Wednesday. “The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. They build on a growing series of warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final weeks.”

Trump allegedly was very specific in his praise of Hitler and his regime.

“In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ‘German generals,’ Kelly would ask if he meant ‘Bismarck’s generals,’ referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ‘Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,’ Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’”

The AP also reported, “Kelly added that Trump often fumed at any attempt to constrain his power, and that ‘he would love to be’ a dictator,” and told The Times: “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

Thursday afternoon, Fox’s Harris Faulkner stopped her guest from sharing those allegations on-air.

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“It’s very difficult for them. They hear all this negative, both sides, and they’re tuning it out, so how do you break through?” a Democratic guest told Faulkner. “What I think is telling is that you have someone like President Barack Obama going and stumping for his candidate where on Donald Trump’s side, you don’t see George W. Bush, you don’t see Michael Pence or leading Republicans doing that, and I think that’s a glaring thing that will come evident.”

“His former chief of staff, John Kelly, coming out —” he said before Harris interjected.

“Alright,” she declared, before her guest continued: “with these accusations —”

“You know what,” Faulkner said, talking over her guest. “I’m not going to go down that road.”

“She used the backdrop of the Naval Observatory,” Faulkner said, “to bring up some some items that were years old and without much time left, I would love for us to go into it…”

Rather than allowing her guests to continue on that topic, she called for their last quick thoughts.

Faulkner closed by asking, “I just want to know, where’s the joy? Because he’s dancing and she’s no longer joyful. Find the joy.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Democrat guest: John Kelly came out with these accusations that are very damning to Trump.

Harris Faulkner: I’m not going down that road.

Dem: Trump has refused to do 60 Minutes.

Faulkner: I just want to know where’s the joy because he’s dancing, and she’s no longer joyful! pic.twitter.com/GaEtV9CElu

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) October 24, 2024

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Image: Official DHS photo by Barry Bahler

The U.S. Naval Academy is under fire after it invited — then uninvited — a distinguished expert on authoritarianism and fascism to give a lecture.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history and Italian Studies at New York University, where her bio says she “writes about fascism, authoritarianism, propaganda, and the threats these present to democracies around the world.” She is the author of books on fascism and serves as an advisor to the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Protect Democracy. She is also an MSNBC opinion columnist, where she appears as a commentator, as she does on other news networks.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Ben-Ghiat announced that she’d be speaking at the event in an op-ed last month and further claimed that former President Donald Trump was an ‘authoritarian ‘and drew comparisons between him and world dictators,” The Daily Caller’s Jake Smith wrote in an opinion piece.

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“I will be speaking about what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule, touching on Fascist Italy, Pinochet’s Chile and the Russian military during the war on Ukraine,” Ben-Ghiat had written in a Substack post, which The Daily Caller cited. “That brings us to today’s post, on why Donald Trump insults the military.”

The Daily Signal, founded by The Heritage Foundation (although now it says it is an independent organization) reported: “Naval Academy Allows Bancroft Lecture Series to Become Politicized.”

“Anti-Trump historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is scheduled to lecture midshipmen on ‘authoritarianism,'” two Heritage Foundation officials, Mathew Lee and Wilson Beaver, wrote at The Daily Signal in a piece marked commentary. They called for the Naval Academy to retract the invitation to Dr. Ben-Ghiat.

The Heritage Foundation is the headquarters of Project 2025. The ACLU calls Project 2025, “a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, ‘Mandate For Leadership,’ is a 900-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda.”

Dr. Ben-Ghiat in her Substack piece also wrote about Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where a cemetery official was “pushed,” allegedly by Trump campaign staffers, according to an Army report. A judge on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to release its records related to Trump’s visit there in August, by the end of this week.

“The conduct of Trump and his campaign on those hallowed grounds violated federal prohibitions against election-linked activities at military cemeteries,” Ben-Ghiat wrote. “The photos and videos they took there also showed graves of U.S. service members whose families had not given permission. Additionally, a Trump aide shoved an Arlington employee who was trying to enforce the rules, and Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed she initiated the aggression and was having a ‘mental health episode.'”

“It seems counter-intuitive when you are running for president and commander-in-chief to insult the U.S. military,” she added. “But that hasn’t stopped Trump: insulting and mocking the military are among his most consistent habits.”

On Tuesday, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Banner, Rick Hutzell slammed the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 for getting Dr. Ben-Ghiat’s lecture canceled. (The U.S. Naval Academy is based in Annapolis, Maryland.)

“If Trump wins, the right-wing thought police will come for the Naval Academy,” Hutzell wrote in a scorching editorial.

“You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy,” he wrote. “All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.”

“Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.”

“As controversies go, it was easy to miss this one. It all took place within the conservative media ecosystem. But it could foreshadow what might happen to the U.S. service academies if Trump is elected next month,” he added. “Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page roadmap for the next Republican president, its authors say they want the service academies scrubbed of anything and anyone deemed insufficiently pure of thought — exactly what they did to Ben-Ghiat.”

Ben-Ghiat in an email told Hutzell: “The lecture had nothing to do with contemporary America and I was not going to mention Mr. Trump at all in this strictly nonpartisan event at an institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, which I greatly admire.”

Hutzell wrote that Heritage “Foundation ‘researchers’ Matthew Lee and Wilson Beaver made the connection a month after Ben-Ghiat’s announcement and simply made up the rest, assuming she planned to attack Trump.” He also pointed to another piece at The Daily Signal by “Heritage Foundation mouthpieces Hans von Spakovsky and Cully Stimson,” and n0ted that “U.S. Rep. Keith Self — a West Point graduate who represents a district north and northeast of Dallas — wrote Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids, the academy superintendent, and demanded that she cancel the lecture.”

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He also reports The Daily Signal’s managing editor called for an apology from the Naval Academy, and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee “called for an explanation.”

Rep. Nick LaLota, running for reelection in up-for-grabs NY-01, was one of the signers of this letter, demanding an explanation from the Naval Academy for inviting NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat to give a history department lecture, after pressure from Heritage Foundation because… https://t.co/3BjZiIWoHY pic.twitter.com/rhp51zlJvL

— Jacqueline Sweet (@JSweetLI) October 24, 2024

“The harrumph over Ben-Ghirat smacks of hamfisted stagecraft. It’s not about protecting young minds from learning what tools authoritarians use, it’s about preparing the case for an intellectual bloodletting,” Hutzell concluded.

Others lashed out at the Naval Academy.

“This is a shameful move by @NavalAcademy. If our armed services are truly training people to be loyal to the Constitution, not to an individual, this is one lecture they need to hear. Very disappointing,” declared attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa, a legal and national security expert.

She also blasted the “members of Congress who do not want students at service academies to learn what happens when you turn into Hitler’s generals,” likely a response to news of Trump allegedly praising Hitler and saying he had wanted “Hitler’s generals.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, pointing to Ben-Ghiat being disinvited, warned: “This is exactly what she’s been warning about—caving in to the demands of authoritarian leaders, even before they’re in place. Dangerous & shameful.”

Historian and professor of strategic studies Phillips P. O’Brien, author of several books including, “How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II,” called Hutzell’s editorial a “terribly worrying story about how MAGA pressure is already leading to censorship in the US military. The US Naval Academy disinvited the distinguished historian @ruthbenghiat from delivering a major lecture because of Heritage-MAGA pressure.”

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