Column | Past Trump advisers say he's fascist. Trump says he's not. Who to trust?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

71% : At the time, Trump praised Milley as being "living proof that the American warfighter is the toughest, smartest and bravest, best and brightest by far anywhere in the world.
49% : When he was appointed, Trump predicted that he would "go down, in terms of the position of Chief of Staff, one of the great[est] ever."Since leaving the White House, Kelly has spoken repeatedly about what he observed while serving in proximity to the former president.
42% : People who are supportive of Trump are almost definitionally inclined to grant him the benefit of the doubt, meaning that they are predisposed to assume that he's the one approaching a point of debate from a more defensible position.
40% : These men, tapped by Trump to help lead the country, saw Trump within the secure confines of the White House and in the moments where presidents are asked to decide the fate of the country.
36% : "Trump tapped Gen. Jim Mattis to serve as his first secretary of defense.
35% : "At another point Trump lamented that he didn't see the same loyalty from his top military leaders as was displayed by "German generals."
32% : "In his new book, "War," The Washington Post's Bob Woodward described a conversation he had with Milley after Trump left office.
29% : A secretary of defense, chief of staff and joint chiefs chairman who served under Trump offered warnings about the former president that his base is primed to ignore.
29% : No, Trump clarified.
28% : There are no valid complaints about Trump, he insists, and there are no reliable complainers.
27% : On Fox News, a host of the channel's morning show "Fox & Friends" attempted to defend Trump by suggesting that the former president perhaps was not "cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis and whatever.
26% : Check out how Harris and Trump stack up according to The Washington Post's presidential polling averages of seven battleground states.
26% : On X, the largely unmoderated social media platform that replaced Twitter, owner Elon Musk shared a misleading post in which the Atlantic article's headline and copy were altered to suggest that Trump was the literal reincarnation of Hitler.
26% : Even that "joke" reinforces the point: A report from a former top aide that Trump had praised Hitler is portrayed as a hyperventilating attempt to draw equivalence between the former president and the German dictator.
24% : "He said that Trump "certainly prefers the dictator approach to government" and "never accepted the fact that he wasn't the most powerful man in the world" -- telling comments given that Trump on Tuesday described the "extreme power" that accompanies the presidency.
17% : Milley described Trump as "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person to this country.
17% : The story about Trump referring to military dead at a cemetery in France as "suckers" and "losers?"
16% : In the wake of the July attempt on Trump's life in Pennsylvania, he and his allies argued that the shooting was a function of commentary that suggested Trump was a threat to democracy.
14% : In fact, questions about Trump's embrace of authoritarianism have been reframed by Trump and his supporters as the real danger.
12% : "Kelly doesn't think he deserves the job because Trump is a dictionary-definition fascist.
2% : But since he is critical of Trump (for being a dictionary-definition fascist), he is viewed by Trump supporters as anti-Trump and therefore his criticisms (of Trump being a dictionary-definition fascist) are necessarily invalid.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.