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Fox News anchor Jesse Watters claimed Thursday most Americans don’t know what fascism is, amid an ongoing political discussion around the topic after former Donald Trump staffers claimed the Republican meets the defition of a fascist and praised Hitler.
“You can’t even define fascism,” Watters said during a discussion on The Five. “I challenge Kamala to tell us what it is. Because a majority of the country doesn’t know the word. She needs non-college educated Blacks, whites and Hispanics to turn out for her, and she is smearing her rival with a mid-20th century European political philosophy.”
“You think people don’t know what Hitler is?” Jessica Tarlov, a fellow panelist, asked in response.
Discussions about fascism have surged to the fore since staffers, including former White House chief of staff John Kelly, told The New York Times and The Atlantic that Trump wished for the generals “Hitler had” and that the former president had privately claimed the genocidal fascist did “some good things.”
Though Trump and his campaign deny the reports are true, the comments quickly became the center of the news cycle.
During a CNN town hall, Harris told host Anderson Cooper that the reported comments are a “911 call to the American people” about a man she described as “unstable — increasingly unstable — and unfit to serve.”
Asked whether she agrees with Kelly’s description of Trump as a “fascist,” Harris told Cooper, “Yes, I do.”
Trump’s alleged Hitler comments quickly became a topic of discussion across the political media and late night comedy shows.
On Fox News, Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade suggested Trump might not have known what he was talking about.
“He obviously has frustration, and I could absolutely see him going out, ‘You know what? It would be great to have German generals [that] actually do what we asked them to do,’” Kilmeade told his fellow panelists. “Knowing that, maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals were Nazis and whatever. But he was frustrated with the slowdown.”
That remark prompted a spoof on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.
“Did you just ‘whatever’ the Holocaust?” Daily Show host Michael Kosta asked during a segment on the controversy. “’Whatever’ is for insignificant things, like when you put the plastic recycling in the paper recycling. It’s not, ‘Oops I did a genocide.’ I like that Kilmeade thinks praising Hitler is a third rail, like it’s a taboo subject that’s not p.c. to discuss at the office anymore.”
The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert also did a routine about the alleged comments on Wednesday. The comedian said Trump praising a fascist wasn’t even that much of a surprise.
“So this is less of an October surprise and more of an early autumn no s***,” he said.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to say, ‘I need the kind of generals Hitler had,’ and still somehow be statistically tied in all the battleground states,” he added.
