John Kelly, former President Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, says he believes Trump matches the definition of a “fascist” and would love to be a dictator if he returns to the White House.

Kelly made the comments in a series of interviews with The New York Times, which posted an article with audio excerpts Tuesday evening. 

Asked if he thinks his former boss is a fascist, Kelly read aloud a definition of the word he found online.

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

“So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Kelly added.

“Certainly, the former president is in the far-right area,” he continued. “He's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators. He has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist, for sure.”

Kelly said Trump, the Republican nominee in next month's election, “would love to be” a dictator if he could.

“I think he’d love to be just like he was in business,” the former Trump aide said. “He could tell people to do things and they would do it and not really bother too much about what the legalities were and whatnot.”

Kelly also confirmed previously reported stories about controversial comments Trump made privately, including that he called service members who were wounded or killed in combat “losers” and “suckers,” that he did not want to be seen with military amputees, and that he said more than once he thought Adolf Hitler “did some good things, too.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, told The Times in a statement that Kelly had shared “debunked stories” and “beclowned” himself.

On a call with reporters, organized by Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, retired U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Steve Anderson and  retired Army Reserve Colonel Kevin Carroll, who served as a senior counselor to John Kelly, slammed the new revelations brought to light by the recent reporting. 

The pair, who have become surrogates for the Harris campaign, pointed to warnings about a potential second Trump term from others who served in his administration, such as former Defense Secretaries Mark Esper and Jim Mattis as well as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. 

“Leaders like General Kelly are warning us that Trump has no empathy, that he's increasingly unstable and unfit, and that he's more extreme than ever,” Carroll said. “I think we have an obligation to take General Kelly and these other leaders such as Secretary Esper, Secretary Mattis, Chairman Milley, seriously when they say these things.”

Carroll noted Kelly in particular has seen Trump has “seen Donald Trump up close in a way that very few other Americans have.”

“And he’s warning us that a second Trump term would be dangerous,” he added. 

The Times story was published on the same day The Atlantic reported that Trump became increasingly interested in the advantages of dictatorship and absolute control over the military toward the end of his presidency. Two people told the magazine they heard the former president say in a White House meeting: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

A Trump spokesperson denied to The Atlantic that Trump ever made the comments.

A retired Marine Corps general, Kelly said he was reluctant to speak openly about his concerns with Trump because he’s no longer in a political job and is now "pretty much a retired military officer who should not get too involved in this kind of thing.”

But he said he felt compelled to speak out after Trump called for the National Guard or U.S. military to be deployed on Election Day to handle “the enemy from within,” which the former president described as "radical left lunatics."

“I think this issue of using the military to go after American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing,” Kelly said. “Even to say it for political purposes to get elected, I think it's a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.

“You really don't want to do that inside the United States. But now that he's talking about it as ‘I'm going to do it’ again. It's disturbing.”

Kelly said Trump “doesn’t know a lot about American history” and is “the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values.”

The former White House chief of staff said Trump would sometimes express his desire for actions that he lacked the legal authority to carry out as president. 

After being explained his limitations by the White House counsel, Trump “would try to make the case that he did have the authority,” Kelly said.

In discussing Trump calling members of the military “losers” and “suckers,” Kelly said the former president “never could wrap his arms around why people would serve the country in uniform, what was in it for them. That was the general theme. … I think he just could never wrap his arms around why people would do things selflessly.”

Kelly said Trump would say that being seen in the presence of members of the military who lost limbs in the line of duty “doesn’t look good for me.”

“That’s an interesting perspective for the commander in chief to have,” Kelly said.

And the former chief of staff said he’d push back on Trump’s assertions that Hitler did some good. 

“If you knew what Hitler was all about from the beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life philosophy, so that nothing he did you could argue was good,” Kelly said. “It was certainly not done for the right reason. But he would occasionally say that.”

Kelly said he’s not making an endorsement in the presidential race, but he asked voters to consider the character of the candidates.

“Even if you’re a conservative Republican, you know much of what's gone on the last 3½ years hasn't been what you’ve wanted to have happen to the country,” he said. “But, you know, we can get by it because you might have a Republican come in in the future. If a person's character isn't at least minimally acceptable, then I think that person can do a lot more damage.”

Asked by reporters why Kelly and other former officials such as Esper and Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton are speaking out against their one-time boss but not endorsing his opponent, Carroll put Kelly’s take on the matter bluntly: “The man would rather would rather chew broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.” 

Anderson, however, said he was “disappointed” that the officials were not openly backing Harris, saying they “owe it to the American people” to be transparent about backing her. 

“We’re just not all about opposing Donald Trump, we’re supporting Kamala Harris,” Anderson added. “We think she has the temperament, the intelligence, the background, the experience.” 

“And I’m frankly disappointed that John Kelly won’t come up and actually say that,” he said.