John Kelly, who once served as chief of staff to Donald Trump, rocked the political world this week when he said in an interview that his former boss fit the definition of a fascist and warned about the possibilities of a second Trump term. “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” he told the New York Times.
The retired four-star Marine general’s words quickly took on a new life, being repurposed into ads from the Kamala Harris campaign and making it into the vice-president’s remarks on the trail. During a CNN town hall Wednesday, Harris said that voters “care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
On Friday, Harris’s embrace of Kelly’s criticism received pushback from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who issued a rare joint statement denouncing her rhetoric. The Republican congressional leaders accuse Harris of sounding similar to Trump’s attempted assassin, writing that she “only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus” despite calling for civility after the thwarted attack last month.
“The man who was caught waiting in ambush in Florida left others with a chilling call to arms: ‘It is up to you now to finish the job’. Labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist,’ risks inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day,” they wrote.
McConnell and Johnson say they’ve been briefed on potential threats to Trump’s life and that they urge Harris to “stop escalating the threat environment, and help ensure President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats.”
The Republicans’ statement notably makes no mention of Trump’s own rhetoric, which has grown increasingly inflammatory as Election Day draws nearer. In recent days, the former president has called Democrats “evil” and suggested that the National Guard or the military be used to deal with “radical left lunatics.” Though McConnell and Johnson specifically call out Harris for using the term “fascist,” they don’t acknowledge that the word is also a favorite insult of Trump’s. “She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist,” he said of Harris during an Arizona rally last month.
Trump’s allies have also been remarkably flippant about the potential of threats against Harris. Elon Musk has joked about someone making an attempt on the vice-president’s life, saying it would be “pointless” to do so. During remarks at a Georgia dinner last month, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, blamed the left for incendiary rhetoric while remarking, “No one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.”
“Somebody’s gonna get hurt by it, and it’s gonna destroy this country. Somebody is gonna get hurt,” Vance said at the Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition dinner. “And you think about what an incredible wound it would open up in the United States of America, all of us, and I promise I will do my part to tone down the rhetoric.”
