I wanna bring in BJ's Vaughn Hilliard in Duluth, GA,
where the former president will be holding a rally tonight.
Peter Baker is chief White House correspondent for the New
York Times and MSNBC, political analyst and author of The
Divider.
Amy Spitalnick is president of the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs.
I want to thank all of you for being here,
Peter.
By our count here at NBC, John Kelly is 1
of 23 former Trump officials who have made it clear
they feel he is dangerous, unfit, a threat to democracy.
But to what John Kelly has said that produced this
very strong statement from Kamala Harris.
In your book, The Divider, you write about Kelly, the
things he said about Donald Trump, his relationship to the
military.
So help us put it in context and just give
me your reaction to what you heard from Kamala Harris,
which seemed to me to be stronger than anything that
we have heard from her on this topic.
Yeah, I think that's right.
Look, John Kelly, a four-star Marine general who served as
his chief of staff, was very disturbed by what he
saw in Donald Trump.
Now, John Kelly is not a liberal, by the way.
He's a pretty conservative guy.
But what he found in Trump was somebody who didn't
have any sense of limits, didn't have any sense of
the Constitution.
You're right.
In our book The Divider, we first told this story
about how Trump said to John Kelly, I want generals
who are like Hitler's generals.
In fact, John Kelly said back to him, well, you
know, Hitler generals actually tried to kill him, right?
Trump didn't seem to understand that.
He's now confirming this story on the record in the
latest accounts, which, of course, is important.
We had other stories in the book as well, but
other generals who expressed concern about Trump's dictatorial or authoritarian
instincts.
Paul Selva, who was a vice chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, had a conversation with Trump in which
Trump was trying to have a military parade down the
streets of Washington.
And Selva told him that wasn't what democracies do.
He says that's what dictators do.
That's what he told him in a private meeting.
General Mark Miley, who was the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, wrote a resignation letter at one point
that he didn't end up sending to Trump saying that
he would resign because he didn't believe that Trump believed
in the same values of the United States fought against
the Nazis for in World War 2.
He didn't end up sending the letter put in a
drawer because he decided it was more important for him
to stay in office to fight, as he put it,
against Trump's abuse of the military's, the worry that he
would use the military against civilians as he is now
suggesting he would do.
So when you hear Kamala Harris say this, she is
in fact, you're right.
I think using stronger language there before, try to get
across the stakes to those voters who haven't that made-up
their minds that this isn't just a choice between an
average Republican and average Democrat.
In her mind, what she's saying is this a choice
between somebody who believes in traditional American democracy, somebody who
doesn't.
Yeah.
And you've heard her talk about guardrails, that people like
Kelly and Millie will not be a part of a
second administration from Donald Trump, if there is one.
So, Amy, not only did Donald Trump allegedly say he
wanted generals like Hitler had, John Kelly also describes Donald
Trump's admiration for Hitler.
Let me play that.
He commented more than once that, you know, that Hitler
did some good things too.
And of course, if you know history, again, I think
he's lacking in that.
But if you know what his, you know, Hitler was
all about, it would be pretty hard to make an
argument that he did anything good.
Your grandparents survived the Holocaust.
Can you help us put this into a larger perspective,
this idea?
Hitler wasn't all bad.
What's the danger?
Look, we have to understand just how crazy it is
that 80 years after the Holocaust, 80 years after my
own grandparents survived the Holocaust, we have a presidential candidate
here in the United States that is glorifying and admiring
Hitler.
And we have to understand it alongside the broader normalization
of anti-Semitism and extremism that Trump has engaged in.
It's not just glorifying Hitler.
It's labeling Jews who don't support him crazy or disloyal,
a label he's also extended to other groups like the
black community and Latinos.
It's preemptively blaming the Jewish community, scapegoating the Jewish community
for his potential loss, and all of that is part
of a broader authoritarian tactic to blame the Jewish people
and other potential scapegoats for not only his loss, but
the broader challenges, broader angles of society.
It is a core authoritarian, a core fascist tactic, and
so we need to understand that, and it can't be
considered partisan to call that out and name it.
It is not about liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican,
is about fundamental safety of the Jewish community, of so
many other communities and the core tenets of our democracy.
Well, let me ask you about that safety, because we
have reported on this show several times, just one example
about the amount of money that synagogues in the United
States are having to spend on safety and security, the
kinds of threats they get, the phone calls they get,
the danger that they see.
So when you hear something like this, does your experience
tell you that words do have a real world impact
and it is dangerous?
Absolutely.
We see first hand how this sort of increasingly normalized
rhetoric, the anti-Semitic, anti immigrant, racist, white supremacist rhetoric and
the conspiracy theories at their core lead directly to real
world violence.
We're coming up on the anniversary of the Tree of
Life shooting in Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack on the Jewish
community in U.S.
history.
There was a shooting that was directly emboldened and inspired
by some of the very rhetoric and conspiracy theories we're
hearing normalized in this campaign about replacement, about efforts to
replace the white race or the electorate with immigrants and
other communities.
We know that these conspiracy theories have already been given
a prime time platform by former President Trump during the
debate and on the rally stage nearly every night, if
not more frequently.
And as we actually move towards people heading to the
polls and the results starting to come out, it's very
possible that he'll lean even further into these conspiracy theories.
And so they lead to real world consequences, including what
we saw in Pittsburgh, in Buffalo and El Paso and
Charlottesville, and so many other attacks that have directly targeted
our communities.
Inspired by this deeply dangerous and increasingly mainstream rhetoric, I
want to bring in Paul Rieckhoff, the founder and CEO
of Independent Veterans of America and host of the Independent
Americans podcast.
And Paul, first of all, thank you for being here.
And I want to play some more about what John
Kelly says.
In this case, it's about Donald Trump's feelings as he
knows them toward veterans.
Take a listen.
Does he have disdain for the disabled?
Certainly is is not wanting to be seen with amputees,
amputees that lost their limbs in defense of this country
fighting for every American to him included, to protect them
that didn't want to be seen with them.
That's that's that's an interesting perspective for the commander in
chief to have.
Why didn't he want to be seen with them?
You could just say, look, it doesn't look good for
me.
And to repeat what Peter pointed out, this is a
four-star general who is saying this.
There are voters, and we know this because we've talked
to them, who's just see this as more of the
same.
Or maybe he won't really.
He doesn't really mean it, right?
What do you hear when you hear that?
I hear a four-star general who lost his son to
a landmine in Afghanistan.
His son died in service of this country.
So when he thinks about making a decision to go
public and have his voice in the record so the
whole world can hear, I think it may be John
Kelly, the father, stepping out of the role as four-star
general and making sure that the country understands how high
the stakes are.
And we can't ever normalize any of this because the
world is watching.
And our enemies are watching when they see a headline
like Trump praises Hitler, Trump attacks wounded veterans, Trump fights
with Arlington Cemetery, our enemies are celebrating.
This is a good Newsday for Vladimir Putin.
Who wants to see our country ripped apart?
Who wants to see the former commander in chief attack
people in his own country?
This is a field day for our enemies.
And I think we have to remember that beyond the
politics, there is a very important national security environment.
And the entire world and all our allies are watching
this chaos.
And we should never normalize because this is not normal.
And we're talking about not just a president, but potentially
electing a commander in chief who will be the authority
over our entire military and the sons and daughters of
people who are watching.
If you've got a son or daughter that's in uniform,
that's going to be their boss if he's elected a
commander in chief at a time of war, right?
We have wars in the Middle East.
We have a war in Ukraine.
The Atlantic Council International Affairs Group cautions that the US
will indeed be electing a wartime president.
And in reality, they say this is not a prediction,
it is where we are.
Does that change the stakes?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, we're talking about adversaries with nukes.
We're talking about multiple regions around the world with conflict.
Just today, the Pentagon released information about American troops that
were wounded in Iraq because they're fighting ISIS.
There were engaged around the world in Yemen and Syria.
We've got troops in harm's way right now.
It's often below the radar.
But American men and women are in uniform and dying.
And they need a commander in chief who respects them,
who respects their diversity, who honors them, who appreciates their
sacrifice.
And like, take a step back, too.
This is not just General Kelly.
It is basically every senior military and foreign policy official,
whoever served under Donald Trump.
It's people like Mccrystal.
It's people like Dick Cheney, the former Secretary of Defense.
He wasn't just a vice president.
He was the Secretary of Defense who have now aligned
against Trump.
And they're all ringing the alarm.
They're all saying the same thing.
This is about our national security and the future of
our country and everyone should be concerned.