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US presidential election briefing: Trump fits the ‘definition of fascist’, says former chief of staff John Kelly

Two weeks out from election day, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff has claimed his one-time boss “falls into the general definition of fascist”.

John Kelly, a former Marine general and presidential aide from 2017 to 2019, made the extraordinary intervention on Tuesday in a series of coordinated interviews. Speaking to the New York Times, he said the former Republican president “prefers the dictator approach to government” and is the “only president that has all but rejected what America is all about”. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, told the Times that Kelly’s accounts were “debunked stories” and that Kelly had “beclowned” himself.

Speaking to the Atlantic, Kelly recounted Trump saying he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Nazi generals showed Adolf Hitler. Trump’s campaign denied the exchange, with an adviser telling CNN: “This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this.”

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz said the reported comments about Hitler’s generals “makes me sick as hell”. “Folks, the guardrails are gone,” Walz told a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday. “Trump is descending into this madness.”

Here’s what else happened on Tuesday:

Kamala Harris campaign updates

Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.
Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”
Eminem introduced Obama at a rally in Detroit later on Tuesday, where the Democratic powerhouse began his remarks with the opening lines of the rapper’s hit track Lose Yourself. Bruce Springsteen will headline two concerts as part of a series that will hit every swing state, the Harris campaign confirmed.
Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.
Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.

Donald Trump campaign updates

Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.
At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.
The Republican campaign filed an extraordinary complaint claiming the UK Labour party is interfering in the presidential election by recruiting and sending party members to campaign for Harris. It is understood that volunteers are campaigning in the US in their own personal time, rather in their capacity working for the Labour party.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail

Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.
The US economy is poised for stronger growth than many wealthy nations, the International Monetary Fund said in forecast. While not mentioning Trump by name, the IMF estimates that a shift towards “undesirable” industrial and trade policies could reduce global GDP by 0.5 percentage points in 2026.
Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population.

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