Mark Milley is not the only general to call Donald Trump a fascist.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that,” John Kelly, the former Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff, said during a recent interview with my New York Times colleague Michael Schmidt. “So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly even went as far as reading a definition of “fascism” to prove his point. “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.
Those are the kinds of things, Kelly added, that Trump “thinks would work better in terms of running America.”
And while he is not a general, Mark Esper, Trump’s onetime secretary of defense, told CNN that he thinks the public should take the former president “seriously” when he raises the possibility of using the military against American citizens.