Mike Johnson, Mitch McConnell’s New Harris Rebuke Is a Huge Red Flag

Donald Trump’s ex-allies and former staffers agree that the Republican presidential nominee is a fascist—but the people laser-focused on returning him to the Oval Office are working overtime to undercut the dire warning.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist ideology, characterized by dictators who lean on military force to quash civil opposition. Trump has repeatedly mirrored the rhetoric of some of the world’s most infamous fascist leaders—namely, Adolf Hitler—on hot-button issues such as immigration. Earlier this week, interviews in The Atlantic and The New York Times revealed that Trump had, in private conversations, showered the violent regimes with praise, reportedly telling White House staffers that he needed the “kind of generals that Hitler had.”

In a joint statement released Friday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that it was Vice President Kamala Harris, and her decision to formally label Trump a fascist, that has ushered more violence into the presidential race (as opposed to Trump’s dangerous and economically unstable policy goals).

Harris “must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,” the pair wrote.

Memorializing the assassination attempt on Trump in July, the conservative leaders argued that the “Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus.”

“Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over,” Johnson and McConnell wrote. “The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility.”

But the joint letter belies the reality that the conservative leaders are backing Trump for wildly different reasons. Johnson, a Christian nationalist with plans to curb LGBTQ+ right and hand states the keys to ban abortion, has vehemently defended Trump for years, going so far as to design the legal strategy to further the former president’s 2020 election interference conspiracy. On the other hand, McConnell—an expedient Republican operative—has privately referred to Trump as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” and a “despicable human being,” all while publicly endorsing him and promising that he’s on the “same team” as the Republican presidential nominee.

Their letter also conveniently ignores the fact that Trump has repeatedly called Harris a fascist for the past few months, despite the fact that Harris’s rhetoric and policies don’t align with the authoritarian ideology while Trump’s do.

Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans acknowledge that Trump is a fascist, according to a new poll from ABC News/Ipsos. That included 87 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans. That same survey found that nearly two-thirds of voters view Trump as a candidate who regularly departs from the truth.