On his way to Paris to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the First World War armistice, for example, Trump listened as John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict. Kelly continued the discussion by connecting the dots from the First World War to the Second World War and all of Hitler’s atrocities.
“Well, Hitler did a lot of good things,” Trump told Kelly.
When I asked Trump about the remark, he claimed the conversation had never happened, and he denied praising Hitler. But others said the remark stunned Kelly. The chief of staff told the president that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred. Trump pointed to Germany’s economic gains once Hitler took over as chancellor. Kelly pushed back again and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.
“Even if it was true that he was solely responsible for rebuilding the economy, on balance, you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler,” Kelly told Trump. “You just can’t.”
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