Former US Ambassador to the European Union Anthony Gardner has compared US President Donald Trump to the Italian dictator who allied himself with Adolf Hitler in World War II.
"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 told Politico on Monday.
Mussolini was the fascist leader who ruled Italy between 1922 and 1943, before being overthrown by members of his own government. He was captured and hanged by communist partisans on 28 April 1945 as he attempted to flee to Switzerland.
Gardner also touched upon Trump’s reaction to the current protests across the US which were sparked by the 25 May death of African American man George Floyd at the hands of a white policeman in Minneapolis.
"It's very disappointing, very dispiriting to have a president of the US who is openly fomenting and inciting racial divisions in order to energise part of his base”, Gardner argued.
The interview followed remarks by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Marc Polymeropoulos, who said last week that he was perplexed by recent images of Trump holding up a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington as local police used force in a bid to disperse protesters in the area.
"It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world. Saddam [Hussein]. Bashar [Assad]. [Muammar] Gaddafi. They all did this", Polymeropoulos tweeted, referring to the former leaders of Iraq and Libya, as well as Syria's current president, respectively.
The remarks came after Trump called on police last week to get "tough" on rioters as he responded to a tweet by a former CIA analyst condemning protesters, who hurled Molotov cocktails at law enforcement officers.
Also last week, POTUS planned to deploy at least 10,000 troops to quell the George Floyd protests in Washington, DC, according to officials familiar with the matter, cited by The Washington Post and CBS News.
"We need to get control of the streets. We need 10,000 troops up here [in Washington]. I want it right now", Trump reportedly said at the time.
Mass protest rallies erupted in the US after 46-year-old Floyd died in police custody following a violent arrest. A video showed white police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee to Floyd's neck for about eight minutes, with the African American man heard repeating he couldn't breathe.