SAUNDERS: Harris calls Trump a fascist. October surprise!

Tuesday, two weeks before the Nov. 5 election, The Atlantic reported that in July 2020, then-President Donald Trump said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

The Atlantic piece by Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg checked nearly every box on the list of reasons American don’t trust the media.

That same day, The New York Times reported that former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, Goldberg’s named source, said that given the alleged Trump remarks about Hitler — “Hitler did good things” — Trump fit the definition of a fascist.

Kelly elaborated. “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

Who’s a fascist? The two big names listed by Britannica are Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. You may not like Trump, but he has not banned opposition parties and he has not sent millions to their deaths. (I shouldn’t even have to write that.)

The door was opened. Voila, courtesy of two media giants, an October surprise.

Conveniently not on the campaign trail Wednesday, Kamala Harris was available to deliver a statement from the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where she slammed Trump as “increasingly unhinged and unstable.”

It was a clever show of her authority — until she said, “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

That’s the sort of accusation you’d expect from a first-year Ivy League student occupying the Quad.

The next day on CNN, Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist.

If Trump wins, expect North Korea, China and Russia to recycle her hyperbole when they lash out at the United States.

Again, we don’t know that Trump said any such thing. Some of the money quotes relied on unnamed leakers — “a witness” and “two people” who heard a conversation — which is weak for an article that is supposed to present the best closing argument against Trump.

Nick Ayers, former chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence, turned down Trump’s proffer to replace Kelly as White House chief of staff. Ayers said no Trump — and he rebutted the story’s claims.

Ayers noted on X, “I’ve avoided commenting on intra-staff leaks or rumors or even lies as it relates to my time at the White House but General Kelly’s comments regarding President Trump are too egregious to ignore. I was with each of them more than most, and his commentary is *patently false.*”

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN that he had not heard Trump speak “along the lines that John Kelly and others have outlined.”

Esper is no toady — Trump publicly “terminated” him in a petty-payback move after Trump lost in 2020.

The sources for Jeffrey Goldberg’s Hitler-generals scoop were “two people who heard him say this.” Goldberg quotes Kelly a lot.

I’ve always considered Kelly to be a patriot and a straight shooter who served this country with faith and courage. But he is one man with a supersize grudge against his former boss.

Four years ago, it was Goldberg who reported Trump had dismissed dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” — and that account was verified by other media.

So now, as Goldberg comes up with new dirt about his old story, you have to wonder why he didn’t reveal it then. Four years later, he tosses out a new tidbit — about generals — without named sources and it’s all over cable news. Sort of like the “Russian dossier.”

Once again, the lack of self-awareness among big media is breathtaking. As Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, posted on X, “When you ascend to the presidential nomination of the Democrat Party without having received a SINGLE VOTE from those having the right to decide the nomination, should you be calling your opponent a fascist?”

Ah, but the left cares more about what a Republican says than what he does.

In the end, this likely helps Trump lure voters skeptical of the media machine and its breathless coverage of Harris. If they wanted to, they couldn’t make themselves look shadier.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.