CNN
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Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz accused Donald Trump on Tuesday of descending into “madness,” following a report that the former president pined for the loyalty of the “kind of generals Hitler had.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate seized on the report in The Atlantic as top party figures warned of dark days if Trump were to become president within thirteen days, given his often expressed autocratic instincts.

The tense atmosphere around a neck-and-neck election increased significantly after Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s article, which stated that Trump had remarked in a private conversation during his presidency, “I need the kind of generals Hitler had.” The report was substantiated in the article by Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly. Trump’s alleged fixation on Hitler was also supported by material in several books, including one by CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

In a separate interview with The New York Times, Kelly said Trump meets the definition of a fascist.

At a rally in Wisconsin, Walz took advantage of new suggestions about Trump’s extremism on a day when other senior Democratic figures raised what they see as the dire specter of an unleashed second Trump term as they try to rally support for Harris.

“Don’t be the frog in the boiling water and think this is OK,” said the Minnesota governor, who served in the Army National Guard, referring to the revelations in The Atlantic. “As a 24-year veteran of our military, this makes me sick to death, and it should make you sick too.”

‘Folks, the guardrails are gone. Trump is falling into this madness. A former president of the United States and candidate for president of the United States says he wants generals like Adolf Hitler had. Think about it,” he added.

Walz noted the recent ruling by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which granted presidents substantial immunity for official acts committed while in office, while seeking to stoke public concern about the nature of a second term for an ex-president who has already tried to overturn the president’s term. outcome of democratic elections.

Trump’s campaign denied the exchange about Trump and Hitler reported in The Atlantic. “This is absolutely incorrect. President Trump has never said this,” said campaign adviser Alex Pfeiffer. And in response to Kelly’s comments to The Times, campaign director Steven Cheung said in a statement that the retired Navy general had “completely betrayed himself with these debunked stories that he concocted because he had failed to serve his president well while in office.” worked as chief of staff. ”

But even as the furor over the Atlantic Report grew, Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, played on Democrats’ warnings that they were taking the country down a dark path.

After musing in recent interviews about targeting the military or National Guard against “enemies from within” (and even specifying that he was referring to top Democrats) and warning that TV networks like CBS should lose their broadcast rights, he launched Trump launches a blistering attack on Harris. at a meeting in North Carolina.

‘Does she drink? Does she use drugs? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I have no idea,” he said. Earlier in the day, he called her “lazy” — a racist trope often used against Black Americans.

Trump also said he would ask Congress to pass a law requiring anyone who burns the American flag to serve a year in prison. “We’re going to ask Congress — they say it’s unconstitutional, I disagree — to impose a one-year prison sentence on anyone who burns the American flag.”

Vance, meanwhile, said a future Trump administration could consider deporting DACA recipients — children brought to the United States illegally but who have built a life here — as part of its tough immigration policy. “If you have 25 million illegal aliens in this country, you have to deport people or you will no longer have a border. It’s that simple,” the Ohio senator said in Arizona.

With the race still deadlocked and Harris potentially needing a perfect run through blue wall swing states to win, leading Democrats on Tuesday raised what they see as the extreme possibilities of Trump’s possible return to the Oval Office. The strategy looked a lot like an attempt to spread fear through the party base and thus increase turnout.

Yet there is a potential mistake in playing the fear card. The history of Trump’s profligate presidency is no secret, even though the memories may have begun to fade. While he exploits voters’ fears about the high cost of living and immigration, efforts to remind the electorate of what his years in the White House were like have been inconclusive. And while Trump’s wildness could alienate some critical moderate voters, his strong showing has brought him back to the White House’s doorstep. That’s partly because his antics come across as a strength to many like-minded Americans.

President Joe Biden issued a dire warning Tuesday about what lies ahead during his stay in New Hampshire.

“If Trump wins, this nation will change,” said Biden, who hoped he had ended the MAGA movement’s power grab when he sent Trump home in 2020. “There are only two things we can do: guarantee he doesn’t, or if he does, make sure we have the strongest Democratic majority we can get,” he added.

Former President Barack Obama, in between tearing Trump apart with savage mockery, also suggested that there are existential stakes for American values ​​and democratic rights in the November election. During a campaign stop in Wisconsin, Obama warned that Trump would dismantle the Affordable Care Act, destroy fundamental American values ​​and repeat his chaotic negligence of the Covid-19 pandemic if he returns to the Oval Office. And the 44th president amplified Democratic warnings about Trump’s age and knowledge — taking aim at his successor’s past strategy against Biden. “We don’t need to see what an older, crazier Donald Trump looks like without guardrails,” Obama warned.

The vice president, meanwhile, in an interview with NBC, made her closing argument that Trump represents a fundamental danger to America’s character, as he vowed to combat the high food and housing prices that her rival has taken advantage of to fuel his own nightmare vision of the American economy. a nation in crisis.

“The American people are being presented with a very, very serious decision right now, two weeks later, about what the future of our country will be, and it includes whether we are a country that values ​​a president who respects his duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States,” she said in the interview.

Harris, who will appear at a CNN town hall event Wednesday evening, warned: “The choice for the American people is the choice to turn the page on division and hate and bring our country together.”

Harris and Trump are courting Hispanics

Harris previously unveiled a new program to court crucial Latino voters — promising to improve access to good jobs, professional training and housing — as she battles for a mainstream Democratic constituency that Trump has entered.

But during a roundtable discussion with Latino business leaders in Miami, Trump, as he often does, did not stick to the ostensible theme of the event, straying into falsehoods and vitriol. His comments about Harris as “lazy” were typical of the ex-president labeling an opponent with the offense he was accused of because he didn’t go out of his way to organize the event – ​​it was at his Doral golf club. . And Trump has canceled a series of interviews in recent days. His relatively light schedule has raised questions about the 78-year-old’s ability to withstand the rigors of the hectic final days of a presidential election campaign.

The former president also indulged in his unique version of fear mongering that he typically uses to inflame his base. He warned that if Harris wins on November 5, another election may never take place. “People don’t know who the hell Harris is, but now they’re finding out she’s a radical leftist lunatic,” Trump said. “We cannot take a risk of losing this election because if we lose this election, we may not have a country anymore.”

Trump’s words evoked the incendiary language he used ahead of his supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, an attempt to halt the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. And if there’s one candidate in this race who has shown disrespect for democratic elections, it’s him.

Tuesday’s increasingly serious calls about the future underscored the deep divisions in American politics, which make the 2024 election an almost existential proposition for both parties.

US elections were once seen as a regular exercise in healing the country’s political wounds – even for a limited period of time. That can’t possibly happen this year.