Is Trump Similar to Benito Mussolini? Former US Ambassador To EU Draws Comparison To Fascist Leader

Anthony Gardner, the former U.S. ambassador to the European Union, on Monday compared President Trump to former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, an ally of Adolf Hitler, saying he was disappointed to see a U.S. president openly fomenting and inciting racial tensions to fire up his base.

In an interview with Politico, the former Obama administration diplomat, said he’s glad former Trump supporters are finally speaking out against the president’s actions, but they should have said something sooner.

“For a couple of years, I was troubled by many things that Donald Trump shares with Benito Mussolini, someone my Italian grandparents fled from in 1938,” Gardner said.

Gardner, who supports former Vice President Joe Biden for president, likened former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who wrote a scathing op-ed about Trump’s call to use the military to quell mostly peaceful racial injustice protests that have swept the country, to a “collaborator” for having served in Trump’s cabinet for so long. Mattis, who resigned his Pentagon post Dec. 31, 2018, was one of several former officials to speak out after last Monday’s incident where federal police cleared peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square with tear gas and rubber bullets so Trump could walk across the street and pose with a Bible in from of a historic church.

“I'll be very honest here, and undiplomatic: I don't welcome those statements in the sense that those people served this president -- and to me quite bluntly they are accomplices,” Gardner said, adding, “So when you choose to work for this kind of administration, which showed its true colors very early on, at some point you abet the policies even if afterwards you decide that they're terrible, that the man you were serving is a terrible person.”

Trump, himself, has denied being an admirer of the World War II Italian dictator even though he tweeted a Mussolini quote during the 2016 presidential campaign: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” He defended it as an “interesting” quote, saying it didn’t really matter who said it.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday Trump has no regrets about the tactics used to clear Lafayette Square despite criticism from religious leaders and some Republicans, and defended the decision by U.S. Park Police to use chemical agents to rout the protesters.

“Park Police acted as they felt they needed to at that time in response,” she said. “We stand by those actions.”

McEnany said last Monday’s demonstration wasn’t all that peaceful, citing video that showed a demonstrator carving a piece of cement and a fire set at St. John’s Church.