Kamala Harris agrees that Donald Trump is a fascist: ‘Yes, we can say that’

Kamala Harris has agreed that Donald Trump is a fascist in her most forthright statement yet in casting her presidential opponent as a potential autocrat harboring authoritarian visions should he return to the White House.

The US vice-president and Democratic nominee crossed a psychologically important boundary in addressing the issue of fascism in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God, an influential radio host whose audience reaches a predominantly Black audience of 8 million listeners monthly. The talk happened during a campaign stop in Detroit, the centre of a battle between the two candidates for the battleground state of Michigan.

Setting out the electoral options in the hourlong phone-in interview , Harris was initially cautious, telling her host that voters in the 5 November election “have two choices … and it’s two very different visions for our nation” before giving a vague definition of her vision.

Related: Trump dances for 40 minutes during campaign rally: ‘Let’s listen to music’

Charlamagne then in effect goaded her into making a leap, saying: “The other is about fascism. Why can’t we just say it?”

Harris immediately replied: “Yes, we can say that.”

It is the first time Harris has publicly endorsed using the word fascist to describe Trump and his plan for governance, although it has been raised repeatedly by some observers as his campaign rhetoric and threats to jail his political opponents have grown more ominous.

Her explicit approval of the word to describe Trump breaks new ground in a presidential campaign in which she has already criticised his warm relationship with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and stated admiration for other foreign autocrats.

Harris’s comments went significantly further than her previous day’s attack on Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric, when she called him “unstable and unhinged” and “dangerous” in response to his branding of Democratic opponents as “the enemy within” . Trump had also advocated using the military against opponents he accused of plotting “chaos” on election day, although – as an opposition candidate – he has no power to do so.

A newly published book by the journalist Bob Woodward quotes the retired chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, as calling Trump a “total fascist” and “a fascist to the core”.

Trump’s campaign immediately denounced Harris’s remarks as inciting Trump’s most virulent critics to try to kill him – a claim the ex-president’s supporters have frequently levelled at Democrats for framing him as a threat to democracy.

Related: Trump doubles down on ‘enemy from within’ comments at Fox town hall

“This is the type of disgusting rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts against President Trump,” the ex-president’s campaign posted on X.

The condemnation overlooked the fact that Trump has repeatedly labelled Harris as fascist – as well as communist and Marxist.

At a rally in Michigan on 29 August, for instance , Trump said: “She’s a Marxist.” He also branded her “comrade”, a prefix meant to denote her supposedly communist affiliations. He also called the Democrats “scum” and “absolute garbage”.

Speculation has long circulated about Trump’s suspected fascist sympathies. John Kelly, who was served as White House chief of staff during his presidency, said in an interview promoting his memoir that Trump said Hitler “did some good things”, crediting him with rebuilding Germany’s economy.

Kelly said he replied: “‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing. I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”