Retired Gen. John Kelly should endorse Harris, says ex-Army general

Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson is calling on former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and others who have worked in the Trump administration to formally support Vice President Kamala Harris for president, after Mr. Kelly warned that Mr. Trump resembles a “fascist.”

“People that know him best are most opposed to him, his presidency,” Mr. Anderson said on a call with reporters Wednesday organized by the Harris campaign.

This call comes after two bombshell interviews Mr. Kelly had with The Atlantic and The New York Times published Tuesday. 

Mr. Kelly, who worked with Mr. Trump from 2017 to 2019, told The Times that he recalled Mr. Trump remarking multiple times that “Hitler did some good things, too.” He told the outlet that the former president “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” and “would love to be” a dictator.

To the Atlantic, he said Mr. Trump said he wants his generals to be like “Hitler’s generals.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung decried the comments in a statement Tuesday, saying Mr. Kelly had “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated.” A top former Trump aide, Mark Meadows, also characterized part of The Atlantic article as untrue.

Mr. Anderson said he wishes Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, had spoken out against Mr. Trump earlier, but is glad that he’s done it now. He said that he’s “disappointed that [Mr. Kelly] hasn’t embraced [Democratic presidential nominee] Kamala Harris.”

“You’re now in the political fray, regardless of whether you want to or not,” Mr. Anderson said of former Trump aides who have criticized him. “So you owe it to the American people to tell us not just you oppose somebody, but you also support Kamala Harris.”

“I’m disappointed that they haven’t gotten–really gone that way,” he said.

However, retired Army reserve Col. Kevin Carroll, a former senior counselor to Mr. Kelly, said on the call that his former boss would “rather chew broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.”

Ms. Harris said the report is “a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best.”

In the Atlantic story, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reported that Mr. Trump offered to pay for the funeral of Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private who was killed by another soldier at Texas’s Fort Hood in 2020. When he later asked how much the funeral had cost and whether the White House was billed for it, he became angry when he found out the bill was $60,000.

“Trump became angry. ‘It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f‑‑‑—- Mexican!” Mr. Goldberg wrote. “He later turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: ‘Don’t pay it!’”

Mr. Meadows lambasted the reporting as a “hit piece.”

“I was in the discussions featured in the Atlantic’s latest hit piece against President Trump. Let me say this. Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” Mr. Meadows wrote on X Tuesday. “He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family.”

Guillen’s sister, Mayra Guillen, also spoke out against the article Tuesday, saying she doesn’t “appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics — hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members.”

“President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today,” she wrote.

Still, Mr. Kelly isn’t the only military officer or former Trump administration official to speak out against the former president. Retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as Mr. Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also called the former president a fascist, and told author Bob Woodward in his recent book that he is “the most dangerous person to this country.”

Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also reportedly told Mr. Woodward that he agreed with Mr. Milley.

In the call Wednesday, Mr. Anderson said he would “like to hear” from other people like Mr. Mattis.

— This story is based in part on wire service reports.