McConnell says calling Trump fascist encourages another assassin to’ finish the job’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday warned that Vice President Kamala Harris is “inviting” another assassination attempt against Donald Trump by calling him a fascist.

“The man who was caught waiting in ambush in Florida left others with a chilling call to arms: ‘It is up to you now to finish the job’. Labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist,’ risks inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day,” the Republicans wrote in a joint statement.

“Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust her with the sacred duty of executive authority. But first, she must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions.”

The Independent has contacted the Harris campaign for comment.

The statement is the latest development in a scandal that’s roiling the final stages of the 2024 campaign.

The back-and-forth began after media reports emerged, quoting former White House officials including Trump chief of staff John Kelly, that the former president praised Hitler and wished for the same kind of generals the genocidal leader had.

Kelly, a former Marine Corps general, also warned in an interview that Trump’s hardline politics amounted to the classic definition of fascism.

Trump and his campaign deny that the Republican ever made these statements about Hitler and his generals, but the reports quickly became the main subject on the campaign trail.

During a CNN town hall, Harris said the reports should serve as a “911 call to the American people” about a man she described as “unstable — increasingly unstable — and unfit to serve.”

Asked whether she agrees if Trump is a “fascist,” Harris told moderator Anderson Cooper, “Yes, I do.”

On the right, meanwhile, responses have varied between downplaying the comments and criticizing Harris.

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.”

Another Fox anchor, Jesse Watters, claimed the fascism debate wouldn’t be a politically advantageous one for Harris.

“You can’t even define fascism,” Watters said during a recent 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.”

Prior to the present conversation, Donald Trump frequently referred to Harris as a “fascist” – as well as a “socialist” and a “communist” – on the campaign trail, and posted what appeared to be an AI-generated image of Harris speaking before a communist rally.

Observers have argued that Trump’s campaign, which frequently pathologizes immigrants and threatens domestic critics on the left with violent persecution, does in fact match classic fascist tropes.