Former President Donald Trump reportedly told his then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that Adolf Hitler “did a lot of good things.”
Trump’s remark reportedly “stunned” Kelly, according to a new book. The book is by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender titled “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” which The Guardian obtained a copy of.
The remarks were made during a visit to Europe to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
Trump reportedly told Kelly, “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”
According to the book, the remark came as Kelly “reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and “connected the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities”.
Kelly told Trump “that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred,” the book says, citing unnamed sources.
Bender writes, “Kelly pushed back again and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.”
Kelly, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, also said, according to the book, “you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can’t.”
A Trump spokesperson, Liz Harrington, pushed back on the book’s claim, saying, “This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made-up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.”