Kamala Harris has admitted that she considers Donald Trump a fascist in her most direct statement yet, portraying her opponent for the US presidency as a would-be autocrat who harbors authoritarian visions, the Guardian reports.
The vice president of the USA and the Democratic candidate for the presidency is on the campaign trail in Detroit, the center of the battle between the two candidates for the key federal state of Michigan. There she spoke with Charlamagne Tha God, an influential radio host whose audience is about eight million listeners a month, mostly black.
She initially cautiously told voters in the hour-long interview that they had two choices and that they were "two very different visions for our nation," before giving a vague definition of her vision.
The host then asked her if her rival's vision was fascism, to which she replied, "Yes, we can say that."
This is the first time that Harris has publicly accepted using the word fascist to describe Trump and his plans for running the country.
The Democratic nominee's comments went significantly beyond her previous attack on Trump's increasingly authoritarian rhetoric, when she called him "volatile and out of control" and "dangerous," in response to his labeling of Democratic opponents as "enemies within." Trump has also advocated using the military against opponents whom he accused of planning "chaos" on Election Day, even though as an opposition candidate he has no power to do so.
A recently published book by journalist Bob Woodward quotes retired US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley as saying that Trump is a "total fascist" and a "fascist to the core".
Trump's campaign immediately denounced Harris' remarks as an incitement by Trump's fiercest critics to try to kill him, an allegation the former president's supporters have often made against Democrats for portraying him as a threat to democracy.
"This is the kind of disgusting rhetoric that has led to two assassination attempts on President Trump," Trump's headquarters said on the social network X. The condemnation overlooked the fact that Trump had repeatedly called Harris a fascist — as well as a communist and a Marxist.
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