‘This Would Be a Death Knell to Any Candidacy’: Anderson Cooper Shocked by Trump’s Own Generals Calling Him a Would-Be Dictator

CNN’s Anderson Cooper gave a stunned reaction to newly-released comments from Ret. Gen. John Kelly, who served as chief of staff to former president Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, the New York Times released audio of an interview with Kelly, who said Trump “would love” to be a dictator if given the opportunity.

Cooper aired the comments on  Tuesday’s AC360:

REPORTER: If he was left to his own devices, would he be a dictator if he didn’t have people around him?

KELLY: Oh, I think he’d love to be. I think he’d love to be just like he was in business. He could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot.

Kelly’s comments come on the heels of reporting from Bob Woodward about Ret. Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the former president is “a fascist to the core.”

Cooper called these facts “remarkable” and said they would doom any other presidential candidate, but seemingly not the 2024 Republican nominee:

It’s remarkable… In any other time, if you had the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the former chief of staff of the president of the United States coming forward – both respected, highly decorated career military people… follow a code of generally not speaking out… In the past, this would be a death knell to any candidacy. I don’t know that it’ll have any impact whatsoever. It seems like everything is baked in. There’s nothing that the foreign president can say that will turn off his supporters.

Earlier in the day, The Atlantic published on-the-record comments from Kelly, who said Trump wondered why the retired general couldn’t be more like Hitler’s generals.

Watch above via CNN.