Harris says Trump is “increasingly bewildered” and sees his praise of Hitler as dangerous

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris blasted Donald Trump on Wednesday over reports that he has spoken positively about Hitler, calling the former president’s recent behavior “increasingly disconcerting.”

“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous for Donald Trump to invoke Adolf Hitler, the man responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Harris said in brief remarks, speaking directly to camera, of his residence at the Washington Naval Observatory.

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times in interviews published Tuesday that he had seen Trump repeatedly praising Hitler and saying the Nazi leader had done “some good things.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung on Tuesday denied Kelly’s claim. He told NBC News that Harris is cooperating with “lies and falsehoods” because he said his campaign is “in tatters.”

In his remarks Wednesday, Harris also criticized Trump’s recent use of the term “enemy from within” to describe Democrats and other political adversaries, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Harris said Trump’s comments are “further proof to 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 side by side with him in the Oval Office and the situation room,” he said.

“Donald Trump is increasingly confused and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to act as a barrier against his propensities and his actions,” he added.

In his interview with The Times, Kelly said that Trump “commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did good things, too.’ The Times published audio of three interviews with Kelly.

Kelly, who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, said he would try to explain to Trump why Hitler was terrible.

“You should never say that in the first place,” Kelly told Trump. “But if you knew what Hitler was about from beginning to end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, you know, the, you know, philosophy, so none of the which he did, you could argue, was good; it certainly wasn’t done for the right reason.”

A separate article published by The Atlantic magazine on Tuesday reported that Trump said during a private conversation at the White House that “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The Atlantic cited two people who said they heard the comment.

Trump campaign spokesman Alex Pfeiffer told The Atlantic that their reports were “absolutely false” and that “President Trump never said that.”

Last year, Trump claimed he knew “nothing about Hitler” and was “not a student of Hitler,” as he defended that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America, which was similar in the phrase that Hitler used.

Harris’ decision to speak out in response to the reports comes in the final days of the campaign, as Trump has stepped up personal attacks against her.