(DCNF)—White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that President Joe Biden believes Republican nominee Donald Trump is a “fascist.”
Trump’s longest-running chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times Wednesday that the former president “met the definition of a fascist” and admired figures like former Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. The press secretary confirmed to CNN senior White House correspondent MJ Lee that Biden agrees with Kelly’s assessment about Trump, claiming that the former president plans to be a “dictator on day one.”
“You have heard from this president over and over again about the threats to democracy,” Jean-Pierre said. “And the president has spoken about that. You have heard from the former president himself that he is going to be a dictator on day one. This is him, not us, this is him. And it’s not just us the White House saying this, you’ve heard it from officials, former officials who worked for the former president say this as well. So, you know, do we agree , I know that [Vice President Kamala Harris] just spoke about this, do we agree about that determination, yes, we do.”
The press secretary pointed to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, in which she accused Trump of encouraging people to raid the Capitol and overturn the 2020 election results. She then accused Trump of “praising Adolf Hitler,” which she said is “dangerous” and “disgusting.”
“So just to be clear, when you said ‘we do agree,’ President Biden believes that Donald Trump is a fascist?” Lee said.
“I mean, yes,” Jean-Pierre replied. “We have said, he has said himself. The former president has said he is going to be a dictator on day one. We cannot ignore that. We cannot. And, we cannot ignore or forget what happened on January 6, 2021. That is real, real people were affected by this. Law enforcement who were trying to protect the Capitol, protect elected officials in the Capitol, congressional members, senators, House members. Their lives were ruined because of that day.”
WATCH:
The former president was threatened by two assassination attempts on his life in the span of two months, one in mid-July and the other in September. The second would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, wrote in an April 22 post on “X” that “democracy is on the ballot” and that President Joe Biden needed to protect Americans from Trump attempting to “make [them] slaves against master.”
The White House has repeatedly branded Trump and his supporters as “extremist threats to democracy” since early on in the administration. Jean-Pierre stated Trump is a “threat to our democracy” during a Sept. 17 press briefing, two days after the second assassination attempt.