Donald Trump complained to his most senior aide, then-chief of staff John Kelly, that he wanted the US’s top generals including retired military figures to show him absolute, unquestioning loyalty whily specifically pointing to Nazi Germany as an example.
In a bizarre exchange described by reporters for The New Yorker and The New York Times in an upcoming book Mr Trump is said to have asked his top aide, who himself was a four-star general in charge of US Southern Command, “[W]hy can’t you be like the German generals?”
A bewildered Mr Kelly says he responded: “Which generals?” to which Mr Trump supposedly shot back, “The German generals in World War II.”
His chief of staff then says he told the president, “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”
The excerpts were published on Monday in The New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, is due to release in September.
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