Fox Host insists Trump’s Hitler remarks were made in private — just 'letting off steam'

24 Oct 2024, 21:30 by https://www.facebook.com/17108852506 · AlterNet

Donald J. Trump/Gage Skidmore/Flickr/Creative Commons
David Badash
October 24, 2024Bank

Fox News host Howard Kurtz insists General John Kelly saying Donald Trump told him he wanted “Hitler’s generals” may be a “gift from the gods” for the Harris presidential campaign, but it won’t change many votes because it was said in private. Kurtz also claimed that because Trump survived two assassination attempts his supporters are not about to be “peeled off,” and it’s all just “noise at this point to them.”

After praising Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, as a “highly respected, um, uh four star who lost a son in Afghanistan,” Kurtz Thursday afternoon told Fox News host Martha McCallum, “I don’t believe that [Kelly] is making things up and nobody can really know what the private conversations may have been.”

“However, at the same time,” Kurtz continued, “Trump may have just been letting off steam about the loyalty he wanted from his generals compared to what he thought about Hitler’s generals, and I think that it is obviously not something that was uh, made for public consumption.”

Kurtz suggested that because there “was not an effort, uh, to say anything publicly” about wanting Hitler’s generals, those “accusations are not gonna move ten votes.”

Kelly this week in interviews has said his former boss, Donald Trump, meets the “definition of a ‘fascist.’” The Associated Press also reported: “Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things.’”

“In his interview with The Atlantic,” The AP reported, “Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ‘German generals,’ Kelly would ask if he meant ‘Bismarck’s generals,’ referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ‘Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,’ Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’”

McCallum suggested to Kurtz that the accusations from General Kelly were “obviously a lot of stuff being uh thrown at the wall here,” but asked also if this could be part of the “so-called October surprises that can sometimes impact elections just 12 days out?”

McCallum stressed that others had claimed Kelly was wrong, and “that they were never said.”

Kurtz did stress he does see Kelly “as a grandstander,” but rather, “concerned and upset.”

McCallum insisted that as far as the Kelly accusations are concerned, “it speaks to me to the tolerance that people have for the level of story that can rock a presidential election.”

“I mean, we all remember Access Hollywood,” the 2016 October surprise where Donald Trump was caught on tape making now infamous comments about grabbing women by their genitals and how he kisses women with out asking because “when you’re a star they let you do it.”

Kurtz also reassured Fox viewers that many of these “are not new allegations, and I think a lot of people, especially Trump supporters, especially after two assassination attempts have failed, are not gonna be peeled off, uh, by this back and forth. It sounds like noise at this point to them.”

Watch a short clip of the interview below or at this link.

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