Biden campaign dismantles Trump over not ‘entirely surprising’ report saying Hitler did ‘good things’ and accusing him of ‘parroting Nazi rhetoric’

The Biden campaign on Tuesday condemned Donald Trump over a report in which he secretly praised Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi forces devastated Europe in World War II and who presided over the Holocaust of six million Jews, for doing “good things.”

Multiple Trump White House insiders said the former president praised other dictators, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korean despot Kim Jong Un.

The Biden campaign sent emails drawing attention to the claims.

“I think we speak for the vast majority of people on planet Earth when we say that Adolf Hitler did not, in fact, do ‘good things,'” spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said.

“Donald Trump’s praise for Hitler is shameful but not at all surprising from the man who parroted Nazi rhetoric during the campaign, called his political opponents ‘vermin’ and imbibed dictators and authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán , Kim Jong-un, and the rest of the gang.

“When Donald Trump talks like a dictator, praises dictators and says he wants to be a dictator, we should probably believe him.”

The condemnation followed a CNN report that Trump praised Hitler and other authoritarian leaders during his time in power.

The network’s Jim Sciutto reported that multiple Trump administration insiders, including his former chief of staff John Kelly, had made these claims.

Kelly told Sciutto, “He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, “Well, what?” And he said, “Well, (Hitler) rebuilt the economy.” But what did he do with the economy? He turned against his own people and against the world.”

The comments are part of segments released from Kelly’s upcoming book The Return of Great Powers.

After his brutal rise to power in the 1930s, Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions of people after starting World War II. The Nazi ruler killed six million Jewish people alone in his death camps in Central Europe.

“And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about that man. Nothing.’ I mean, Mussolini was a great guy by comparison.”

Trump called Kim Jong Un “a great guy” and called Xi Jinping “brilliant,” while privately praising Putin in addition to his public admiration for the Russian leader. Trump has publicly called Putin “very, very strong.”

Just last week, Trump was widely criticized for hosting Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, a darling of American conservatives despite his anti-democratic policies, at Mar-a-Lago.

Orbán’s approach appeals to Trump’s brand of conservatives, who have abandoned their embrace of limited government and free markets for a system that sides with their own ideology, said Dalibor Rohac, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“They want to use the tools of government to reward their friends and punish their opponents, which is what Orbán has done,” Rohac said.

Orbán’s government has responded, repeatedly praising the former president.

Hitler’s praise may not come as a big surprise after Trump hosted infamous neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West at his Florida residence in November 2022.

“However, it is quite difficult to believe that he missed the Holocaust, and quite difficult to understand how he missed the 400,000 American soldiers who died on the European theater. But I think it’s more about the tough guy thing,” Kelly continued about Trump’s feelings toward Hitler.

Kelly went on to say that Trump would compliment Hitler’s ability to generate extreme loyalty among his inner circle as he accused his own inner circle of betraying him.

“He asked about the loyalty issues and how, when I pointed out to him that the German generals as a group were not loyal to him and in fact tried to kill him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly said.

“When he brought us in as generals, he really believed that we would be loyal—that we would do everything he wanted us to do.”

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton told CNN that the ex-president considers himself a “big guy.”

‘He likes to hang out with other big boys, and big boys like Erdogan in Turkey can put people in prison and you don’t have to ask permission from anyone. He likes that,” the former United Nations ambassador said.

In response to the allegations, a Trump spokesperson said that Kelly and Bolton suffer from ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’.

“John Kelly and John Bolton have completely denied themselves and are suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They need to seek professional help because their hatred is consuming their empty lives,” said Steven Cheung.

Kelly’s book explores “a new, more uncertain global order with reporting from the front lines of power, from existing wars to looming wars around the world,” according to a new synopsis.

Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un once exchanged threats of destruction and crude insults after North Korea conducted a series of high-profile weapons tests in 2017 to gain the ability to launch nuclear attacks on the U.S. mainland.

Trump had said he would rain “fire and fury” on North Korea and ridiculed Kim as a “little rocket man” on a suicide mission, while Kim responded that he would “tame the mentally deranged American lunatic with fire.”

But they stopped short of such rhetoric and instead developed a personal relationship after Kim abruptly contacted Trump in 2018 for talks about the fate of his advancing nuclear arsenal.

They met three times in 2018-19, starting with a summit in Singapore, making Trump the first sitting US president to meet a North Korean leader since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Their meetings have made little progress since their second summit in Vietnam ended without any agreement in early 2019 after disputes over US-led sanctions on North Korea.