A NEW book claims that former president Donald Trump praised Adolf Hitler while speaking to his chief of staff back in 2018.
Trump made the alleged comment during a tour of Europe to mark 100 years since the end of World War I, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's new book 'Frankly, We Did Win This Election,' a copy of which The Guardian obtained.
"Well, Hitler did a lot of good things," Trump is believed to have told his former chief of staff John Kelly, who was "stunned" by the remark.
Kelly told Trump he thought he was wrong, even "reminding him which countries were on which side during the conflict," but the president "was undeterred," and went on to praise the Nazi dictator's efforts to revive the German economy in the 1930s, according to Bender.
In response, Kelly "argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide," before telling his boss: "You cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can't."
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)This was the same trip in which Trump was alleged to have called American soldiers buried in a military graveyard 'losers' and 'suckers'. He was also forced to deny that he canceled a cemetery visit during the trip because he refused to honour the dead, citing poor weather conditions instead.
Kelly resigned from his post in December 2018 and has been a vocal critic of Trump ever since.
A spokesperson for Trump insists that Kelly was in fact fired, and dismissed the latest reports as nothing more than lies.
"This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired," she told Insider.
