Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

New York City Mayor Eric Adams rebuffed recent claims that former President Donald Trump is a fascist and said that Trump’s Madison Square Garden event should go ahead.

“I have heard those terms hurled at me by some political leaders in the city, using terms like [Nazi leader Adolph] Hitler and fascist,” the Democratic mayor said at a news conference in New York City on Saturday.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a news conference in New York City on April 5, 2024. Brittainy Newman/AP Photo

“I know what Hitler has done, and I know what a fascist regime looks like. I think, as I have called for over and over again, that the level of conversation, I think we can all dial down the temperature,” Adams said at the conference in which he also detailed a significant police presence planned for Trump’s event at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan Sunday.

He made the comment after Vice President Kamala Harris and her surrogates criticized Trump in recent days after his former chief of staff John Kelly accused him of praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Germany dictator’s generals while he was in office. Trump has refuted Kelly’s comments.

Referring to the claims, Harris told voters Wednesday at a CNN town hall that “I invite you to listen and go online to listen to John Kelly” make the allegations against the 45th president. “This is a serious, serious issue. And we know who he is. He admires dictators,” Harris said.

Kelly told the New York Times and the Atlantic that the former president wanted generals like Hitler had.

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly told the New York Times.

Kelly’s comment was not publicly corroborated by other former Trump White House officials and was refuted by Trump in the past week.

During a media event, Trump told reporters that he never said positive things about Hitler during his time in the Oval Office, saying that he “would never say that” and criticized The Atlantic and its reporting.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief of staff Mike Ayers has also rebutted the claims.

“I’ve avoided commenting on intra-staff leaks or rumors or even lies as it relates to my time at the White House but General Kelly’s comments regarding President Trump are too egregious to ignore,” Ayers posted on X. “I was with each of them more than most, and his commentary is *patently false.*”

After Harris’s statement, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung accused the Democratic candidate of spreading “outright lies and falsehoods.”

Adams, who is currently facing federal bribery charges, said Saturday that he disagrees with the notion that Trump’s rally should be scrapped over Kelly’s comments.

“This is America. This is New York, and I think it’s important that we allow individuals to exercise their right to get their message clear to New Yorkers,” the mayor said. “And our job as a city and as a Police Department is to make sure they can do that … in a peaceful way.”

Adams’s comments about lowering “the temperature” also appeared to echo a comment made by President Joe Biden earlier this year in the immediate aftermath of the first assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania. At the time, Biden called on Americans to “cool it down” after the shooting, in which a bullet clipped Trump’s ear.

Trump became the subject of a second assassination attempt in mid-September after the Secret Service engaged with an individual who was pointing a rifle through a perimeter fence while the former president was golfing in Florida.

In mid-October, Trump spoke at the Al Smith charity dinner in New York and made reference to the federal charges Adams is facing, as well as those he is facing. “They’ve gone after me, Mr. Mayor, and you’re peanuts compared to what they’ve done to me,” he said on Oct. 18. “And you’re going to be OK.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.