During a town hall on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in the 2024 election, said she agreed with assessments made by former Trump administration officials that Republican nominee Donald Trump is a fascist.
Harris was asked the question during a CNN town hall, which was originally supposed to be a second debate between her and the GOP ex-president.
The question was prompted by recent comments from former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who described Trump’s desire for the kind of Nazi-era German generals that Adolf Hitler had. Kelly also said that Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist.”
Questioned over whether she agreed with Kelly’s assertions, Harris answered in the affirmative.
“Yes, I do. Yes I do,” she said.
She went on to say that if Trump became president for a second time, he would not be surrounding himself with trustworthy people.
“[Kelly is] putting out a 911 call to the American people,” Harris said. “Understand what could happen if Donald Trump were back in the White House. And this time we must take very seriously [that] those folks who knew him best and who were career people are not going to be there to hold him back.”
She added:
Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions.
While it is historically unusual for a candidate to call another candidate a fascist in a presidential contest, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that one in two Americans agree that Trump is a fascist.
According to that poll, 49 percent of Americans say that Trump is a fascist. Just a little over one in five voters (23 percent) say that Harris is one.
Trump would indeed align himself (and likely appoint to the White House) a number of far right characters if he becomes president again, and is expected to implement many of the key policy points listed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
While Harris has a broader coalition of support, her “big tent” approach to campaigning is sounding some alarm bells, with many condemning her embrace of right-wing politicians — particularly, former Rep. Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney (a chief architect of the Iraq war and the subsequent U.S. occupation of that country).
Comedian and political talk show host Jon Stewart brought this point up directly to Harris’s vice presidential running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota), on “The Daily Show” earlier this week.
“The Cheney thing — do we really have to do that?” Stewart asked Walz.
Walz attempted to explain Harris’s wide coalition of support, ranging from the Cheneys to progressive independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to pop superstar Taylor Swift, an argument that Stewart quickly rejected.
“What country did Taylor Swift get us to invade?” Stewart asked.
David Faris, an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University, also chided the Harris campaign for believing campaigning with Liz Cheney would somehow appeal to “centrist” voters.
“It is without a doubt one of the most inexplicable stretch-run decisions I’ve ever seen from a major party nominee, and it is a sign of deep, structural delusion inside the Harris campaign and Democratic elites,” Faris said in an op-ed published in Newsweek. “In an election that looks like it might be the closest in American history, Harris cannot afford to make any more unforced errors like barnstorming with an unpopular archconservative.”
There is a real possibility that Harris embracing more right-wing figures could alienate Democrats and progressive voters in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, as they may see it as a decision to embrace the same extremist views that Harris is saying voters should reject. Harris has also consistently refused to include leftist voices within the “big tent” — particularly those who are advocating for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel and a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“The tent is big enough for a guy who got us into a war with Iraq, and then the tent is not big enough for a Palestinian to speak for two minutes on the DNC stage,” said Elise Joshi, the executive director of the progressive group Gen-Z for Change.
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