Fact Check: CNN’s Van Jones Claims Only Republicans Called Trump Hitler, Nazi, Fascist

CLAIM: CNN commentator Van Jones claimed on Election Night that only Republicans called President-elect Donald Trump a Hitler, a Nazi, or a fascist.

VERDICT: False.

“The thing I think that’s most important to remember is … The people who said [Trump] was a Hitler lover, weren’t Democrats,” said Jones. “They were Republicans. People who said that he was a fascist weren’t Democrats. They were Republicans who worked for him. It’s not just that there’s these elite Democrats over here, poisoning the well. You had a pretty broad consensus from Chomsky to the Cheneys that were very concerned and remain concerned.”

While Jones correctly stated that some past Republicans who worked with Trump had referred to him as a fascist or a Hitler-lover, he was incorrect to say that Democrats, the establishment media, and the Kamala Harris campaign did not enthusiastically repeat those claims.

Leading up to Election Night, for instance, Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s soon-to-be former running mate, claimed without evidence that President-elect Trump’s campaign rally held at Madison Square Garden was a Nazi rally.

“Don’t miss on this, go do your Google on this — Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” he told supporters in Las Vegas. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”

The establishment media, most especially MSNBC, put forward the claim that President-elect Trump’s campaign rally had similarities to a Nazi rally in the 1930s.

Likewise, Kamala Harris described Trump as a “petty tyrant,” “unstable,” “obsessed with revenge,” “consumed with grievance,” and “out for unchecked power.” Harris also referenced Trump’s previous claims about the “enemy within,” and his statement that he would use the military against them.

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. All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.”

During that rally, Democrats pushed a counter-message by projecting a message that he “praised Hitler” onto Madison Square Garden in New York.

The “Trump Praised Hitler” projection came in response to a recent report in The Atlantic that claimed the former president told his former chief-of-staff, Gen. John Kelly, that he wanted German generals like the ones Hitler had:

In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.

“‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.

While Kelly and former Gen. Mark Miley corroborated that this exchange took place, no audio recording was produced. Trump has also denied ever making the remark. Some Republican leaders said pushing those claims would further put Trump at risk of another assassination attempt.

“This summer, after the first attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in more than a century, President [Joe] Biden insisted that ‘we can’t allow this violence to be normalized.’ In September, after President Trump escaped yet another close call, Vice President Harris acknowledged that ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,’” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wrote in a joint statement.