In an odd exchange described by reporters for The New Yorker and The New York Times in a forthcoming book, Trump is said to have asked his top aide, himself a four-star general who heads the US Southern Command, “[W]can’t you be like the German generals?’ A bemused Mr Kelly reportedly replied: “Which generals?” to which Mr Trump allegedly replied, “The German generals in World War II.” His chief of staff reportedly told the president at the time: “You know they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost succeeded?” But the president in response replaced his own version of the story. “No, no, no, they were completely loyal to him,” Mr Trump reportedly insisted to his aide. The excerpts were published Monday in The New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, is due out in September. Mr. Kelly served as chief of staff during the first half of Trump’s tumultuous four years in office, joining after the departure of Reince Priebus. He imposed some order on the rowdy group of Trump loyalists in the West Wing, including clashing with Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, and eventually ousting him. He left office in early January 2019. Surprisingly, the statements reported on Monday are not the first words of approval the former president has been accused of making about Nazi Germany and its leadership in conversations with Mr Kelly in particular. He is said to have told Mr Kelly, “Well, [Adolf] Hitler did a lot of good things” during a 2018 trip to France with his top advisers, a statement first reported by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal for his own book on the Trump presidency. Mr Trump denied making those remarks through a spokesman after the book was published. The former president had a troubled relationship with top US military officials while in office. At first he appeared to seek to align his administration with the views of the US military establishment, filling a number of top positions in his White House, including as chief of staff, with retired generals such as Mr Kelly and James Mattis. But by the end of his presidency he had clearly resented the same retired brass (and they with him) and was re-embracing the politicians and loyalists who made up much of his inner circle. In June 2020, he received some of his harshest criticism from a former member of his administration when Mattis responded to the use of police officers to clear peaceful protesters from a park outside the White House so the president could take part. in a photo op. “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who is not trying to unite the American people — or even pretending to be,” Mattis wrote at the time. “On the contrary, he is trying to divide us.”
