The Evidence for Trump's Fascism Is Overwhelming

A fat, lazy, incurious fascist is still a fascist.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

As previously noted in this space, Donald Trump’s supporters can offer an array of rationalizations for why his scarier policy pronouncements should not be taken seriously. Journalists have also been advancing this idea. Yesterday, Joe Klein argued that:

Trump’s strength is his disinhibition. His supporters don’t believe for a minute that he’s going to forcibly deport a million illegals—but they think he’d like to and that maybe he’ll round up some Venezuelan gangsters and send them packing. Trumpers get hyperbole; earnest liberals do not. Earnest liberals seem terrified of spontaneity, informality, naughtiness.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World likes spontaneity and informality as much as the next guy,. and is certainly not above a little bit of naughtiness. But the evidence is mounting that Donald Trump is most certainly a fascist, and that folks who are pretty far from being earnest liberals are speaking and acting like this is a confirmed fact.

Let’s consider the evidence from this month alone. First, there was Bob Woodward’s book War, in which Trump’s last Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley sought out Woodward to make his feelings known on this matter. According to the Washington Post’s Ruby Cramer:

Milley warned that former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in new comments voicing his mounting alarm at the prospect of the Republican nominee’s election to another term….

Upon seeing Woodward again at a reception in March 2023, he told the author that his concerns had grown more dire.

“I glimpsed it when I talked to you back — for ‘Peril,’ but I now know it. I now know it,” he said.

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” the general told Woodward. “Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.”

By the following year, Milley was receiving a “nonstop barrage of death threats” that he attributed to Trump’s political rhetoric and his fixation on retribution for his perceived enemies, Woodward writes.

After retiring, Milley installed bulletproof glass and blast-proof curtains at his home.

He also fears being recalled to uniform to be court-martialed “for disloyalty,” should Trump win against Vice President Kamala Harris in November, Woodward writes.

This does not sound like someone who is hyping the threat for the sake of hyping the threat. Retired four-star generals do not install bulletproof glass and blast-proof curtains in their homes in response to empty threats. Milley is clearly concerned about someone acting at Trump’s behest or encouragement to harm him and his.

If this was the only former general expressing concern about Trump’s fascism…. well, it would still be a pretty big deal, but it would be possible to paint Milley as an exception, a grandstanding former general officer. The thing is, more stories have come out since Woodward’s revelations that buttress Milley’s claims. On Tuesday, for example, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg wrote these words:

Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”….

A desire to force U.S. military leaders to be obedient to him and not the Constitution is one of the constant themes of Trump’s military-related discourse. Former officials have also cited other recurring themes: his denigration of military service, his ignorance of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his admiration for brutality and anti-democratic norms of behavior, and his contempt for wounded veterans and for soldiers who fell in battle….

In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.

This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel….¹

On separate occasions in 2020, Trump held private conversations in the White House with national-security officials about the George Floyd protests. “The Chinese generals would know what to do,” he said, according to former officials who described the conversations to me, referring to the leaders of the People’s Liberation Army, which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. (Pfeiffer denied that Trump said this.) Trump’s desire to deploy U.S. troops against American citizens is well documented. During the nerve-racking period of social unrest following Floyd’s death, Trump asked Milley and Esper, a West Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the Army could shoot protesters. “Trump seemed unable to think straight and calmly,” Esper wrote in his memoir. “The protests and violence had him so enraged that he was willing to send in active-duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet, he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense of history, of propriety, and of his oath to the Constitution.” Esper told National Public Radio in 2022, “We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at General Milley, and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’” When defense officials argued against Trump’s desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses, “You are all fucking losers!”

This all sounds pretty fascist! And there is more from Kelly, Trump’s first Secretary of Homeland Security and former White House chief of staff. He spoke with the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt:

With Election Day looming, Mr. Kelly — deeply bothered by Mr. Trump’s recent comments about employing the military against his domestic opponents — agreed to three on-the-record, recorded discussions with a reporter for The New York Times about the former president, providing some of his most wide-ranging comments yet about Mr. Trump’s fitness and character….

He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The Atlantic….

In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.

“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Mr. Kelly said.

He added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Again, as with The Toddler in Chief, it cannot be stressed enough that it is Trump’s former appointees who are describing him this way. It’s not the far left. It’s not Nancy Pelosi or Rachel Maddow or anyone who comes even close to the left side of the political spectrum. It is former four-star generals.

The further evidence that Trump’s fascist threats are having a chilling effect on how Americans behave? Let’s take a look at two billionaire businessmen and how they are dealing with their decision to support Kamala Harris and oppose Donald Trump. First, there is Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world. According to the New York Times’ Theodore Schleifer:

After decades of sitting on the sidelines of politics, Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, has said privately that he recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run, according to three people briefed on the matter.

The donation was meant to stay under wraps. Mr. Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, has not publicly endorsed Ms. Harris, and his donation would represent a significant change in the strategy that has previously kept him away from gifts like this….

Donating to a “dark money” group offers some protection: Some wealthy donors who support Ms. Harris are nervous about being publicly identified with her campaign for fear that Mr. Trump would seek revenge after November. Mr. Trump has threatened to go after the supporters of Ms. Harris, including her biggest donors.

Trump’s threats have also affected how Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, has expressed his support of Kamala Harris. The New York Times’ Rob Copeland explains:

In private, however, Mr. Dimon has made clear that he supports Vice President Kamala Harris and would consider a role, perhaps Treasury secretary, in her administration. He has also told his associates that the former president’s 2020 election denialism remains close to a disqualifying factor. Those views were shared by three people who asked not to be identified discussing his politics because Mr. Dimon was speaking privately.

Mr. Dimon isn’t making his stance known publicly because he’s fearful that if Mr. Trump is victorious, he could retaliate against the people and companies who publicly opposed his run, his associates said. That’s a concern shared by other powerful corporate executives, and not without reason: Mr. Trump has begun to increase threats of political retribution in recent weeks….

In his private conversations with Wall Street executives supportive of Ms. Harris, he has said that he has a duty to JPMorgan shareholders to protect the public company from potential political retaliation, two people said.

So two billionaires — some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in America — are keeping their support of Kamala Harris on the down-low because they fear Donald Trump’s retribution should he take power. Again, Gates and Dimon might not be conservatives, but they ain’t lefties either. Both are pretty big fans of capitalism!

So it sure seems as though Trump is a dangerous fascist, and pretty powerful people are treating him that way. But this raises the obvious question: if Trump is also showing signs of cognitive decline, won’t his fascist impulses be thwarted?

Unfortunately, the answer is no, for two reasons. First, Trump has made it clear what he thinks of his political opposition and what he wants to do to them. Even a less cognitively capable Trump will be able to order action against his “enemies from within.”

Second, Trump will not have John Kelly or Jim Mattis or Mark Milley constraining him this time around. Trump’s 2024 team will be far more pliant and far more fascist-friendly. Consider that Trump’s one 2024 selection has been JD Vance, a man with far-right links who acknowledges he would not have certified the 2020 election result. Trump’s possible nominee for Attorney General has promised a three-week “reign of terror” if he gets the job. Even if Trump winds up being addled, during his second term the United States would be veering awfully close to a bad Star Trek episode.

The plain truth is that Donald Trump is a fascist who, if he wins next month, would appoint more fascists to his cabinet and his White House staff. Even the coin-flip possibility of Trump winning has scared retired four-star generals into speaking out and cowed billionaires into keeping quiet.

Trump’s fascism is not theoretical. It’s real-world effects were visible during his first term. They will only become more manifest if he wins in November.

1. I don’t think I can let this go. Like all Gen Xers, I grew up with a father who is obsessed with World War II. I read plenty of military histories about the Second World War that my father had purchased. The idea that Trump has no idea who Rommel is but admires Hitler’s generals raises so many questions. Was he a Gerd von Rundstedt fan? A Heinz Guderian-stan? A rare Alfred Jodl devotee? Or does Trump not know a single f**king thing about the Second World War except that Hitler’s generals were viewed as obedient?

Nope, can’t let this go!