'That's what dictators do': Book claims Trump fumed over how his generals weren't like Hitler's

Former President Donald Trump was reportedly frustrated because his generals weren’t “like the German generals in World War II” and they had failed to offer him total fealty like those Nazi soldiers who served Adolph Hitler, according to a new book about Trump’s time in the White House. 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In a new book by New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Divider: Trump in the White House, the former president and his frequently tense relationship with his generals were detailed alongside other troublesome insights into his scandal-ridden term.

The New Yorker published an excerpt from the book on Monday that recounted the aforementioned exchange where Trump exposed not just his own ignorance of world history and American history, but also a position utterly divorced from the nation’s historic positions against bald fascism and authoritarianism. 

“You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals,” Trump told his then-Chief-of Staff John Kelly. (Kelly served from July 2017 until January 2019.) 

Kelly, unsure, asked Trump which generals he meant. 

“The German generals in World War II,” Trump replied. 

Kelly told Trump that Hitler’s generals had actually tried to assassinate the Führer on multiple occasions and were nearly successful but Trump refused to believe him, insisting instead that the Nazi generals were all blindly subservient.

”No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” Trump said. 

This, of course, was false.