Democrats, including the Vice President, need to stop calling Trump a “fascist” and “dial down the temperature” of political rhetoric directed at the former president, says New York Mayor Eric Adams.
During a press conference on Saturday, Adams was asked explicitly if he thinks Donald Trump is a “fascist.”
In response, Adams said there was no question of the former president being a “fascist,” since what Adolf Hitler did, and what a fascist government actually looks like, is well known.
“You know, I have been—had those terms hurled at me by some political leaders in the city using terms like ‘Hitler’ and ‘fascist,’” Adams said.
“My answer is no. I know what Hitler has done, and I know what a fascist regime looks like. I think, as I’ve called over and over again, that… we could all dial down the temperature.”
Adams also addressed criticism of Hillary Clinton’s comments on Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden, which takes place today, at 5pm EST. Hillary Clinton claimed in an interview this week that the rally is a reenactment of the famous American Nazi rally that took place there in 1939. The German American Bund rally was attended by 20,000 people and heavily protested. The event was billed as a “pro-American” rally, and featured a huge portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas.
“I’ve heard people say that the former president should not be able to have a rally in Madison Square Garden,” Adams continued.
“I strongly disagree. This is America, this is New York. I think it’s important that we allow individuals who exercise their right to get their message clear to New Yorkers. Our job as a city, and as a police department is to make sure they can do that in a peaceful way. I think that we must be extremely cautious. The heat we turn up today, pre-election, is going to have to be the heat we’re going to have to govern in.”
Earlier this week, former Trump chief of staff John Kelly accused the former president of expressing his admiration for Adolf Hitler multiple times during his presidency, in a hitpiece for the Atlantic.
The claim was seized upon by Trump’s opponents as evidence that he is a dictator-in-the-making. John Bolton described Trump as “too stupid to be fascist,” in response to the Atlantic story, and Vice President Kamala Harris held an impromptu press conference at which she condemned Trump for his supposed admiration of the Nazi leader.
Trump himself condemned the story as a desperate tactic, and called Harris the real “threat to democracy.” In a statement on his social-media platform Truth Social, he said, “Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the Race from Crooked Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind. She is a Threat to Democracy, and not fit to be President of the United States — And her Polling so indicates!”