Bill Maher and Megyn Kelly invoked Adolf Hitler and other dictators as they bickered about whether Donald Trump was a threat to democracy.

The pair were discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Maher’s show when it went off the rails with four other countries plus Nazi Germany being dragged in.

Maher was the first to prove Godwin’s Law when he began comparing the present geopolitical situation to the 1930s Axis vs Allies.

‘We thought when the Ukraine War started, Putin would be isolated. He’s not isolated,’ Maher began.

‘He had the BRICS nations – that’s Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now four or five other countries – it’s about half the world’s population, around 35 per cent of the GDP.

 Bill Maher compared the 1930s pre-World War II Axis powers to Russia, China, and their ‘dictator’ allies in the present, and warned the US under Donald Trump may choose the wrong side

‘These are the dictator countries. There’s a very World War II feeling here, when the dictator countries are getting together. 

‘In World War II, what did Hitler and the Japanese have in common? Nothing! Except they saw the world one way – fascism.’

Brazil was a military dictatorship in 1964 to 1985, then returned to democracy until the presidency of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

He was defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at the 2022 election but claimed voter fraud, his supporters stormed parliament, and he allegedly planned a self-coup to keep himself in power but was unsuccessful.

India is a functioning democracy, but its democratic institutions have eroded over the past decade since Narendra Modi became prime minister.

‘Through its control of the media, monopolization of campaign finance and harassment of opponents, India seems set on a path to becoming an illiberal pseudo-democracy similar to Turkey or Russia,’ Chatham House wrote last year.

‘Opponents and critical journalists have been harassed, prosecuted, investigated for tax irregularities or put under surveillance, restricting critical voices.’ 

China is a single-party dictatorship and South Africa has a strong democratic institutions, free press, and an independent judiciary, but is plagued by corruption and political violence remains stubbornly persistent.

BRICS also includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE – all of which are either dictatorships or severely flawed democracies.

Kelly countered that Trump didn’t start any wars or involve the US in any new conflicts when he was president and expected the same in his second act

Despite the flawed ‘dictatorship’ claims, Maher pressed on with his comparison of BRICS to Axis – and warned the US could be next.

‘Somehow the world seems to be dividing between the ‘good guy’ countries – the democratic countries – and these autocracies. And, if your guy gets in, we’re gonna be on the wrong side of this one,’ he said. 

Kelly countered that Trump didn’t start any wars or involve the US in any new conflicts when he was president and expected the same in his second act.

‘Putin did not invade Ukraine until Biden took over. We had the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which projected weakness through the world,’ she claimed.

‘People understood that we were enfeebled, and that is what was provocative. Weakness is provocative.’

Trump, as president, negotiated American withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban, allowing the terrorist group to retake the country, but troops were not scheduled to leave until after his term ended in 2021.

‘Trump destabilized these people. They didn’t know what to expect of him. Next thing you know, he’s bombing Soleimani,’ Kelly continued.

‘Trump did strategic strikes that had people on their heels, they didn’t know what he might do to them.’

Bill Maher and Megyn Kelly invoked Adolf Hitler and other dictators as they bickered about whether Donald Trump was a threat to democracy

Maher said he was less concerned about that and more with ‘what he might do to us’ in domestic affairs if he was elected again.

Kelly shot back: ‘We’ve had four years of Trump. Trump did not go after his political enemies with the Department of Justice, that was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.’

President Joe Biden did not initiate any of the many legal proceedings against Trump. They were brought by state and local authorities and there is no evidence of collusion between them and the White House.

Maher made another Hitler comparison, noting that the Nazi dictator didn’t bring in his most reprehensible and autocratic policies until years after he took power.

‘Well, we had Hitler in the ’30s and things were okay, and then we had Hitler in the ’40s and they got way worse. Just because we had him…’ he said, before Kelly interrupted.

‘He hid his Hitlerism the first four years and is going to come out full force in the second term?’ she said, in rhetorical reference to Trump.

Maher replied: ‘Well he tried to do things like that, he tried to do dictatorial, fascist things and he was stopped.’

Kelly then repeated her baseless claim that Biden and Kamala Harris ‘unleashed this Department of Justice against their political enemy Donald Trump, their number one chief rival for the presidency’.

Maher’s studio audience laughed at her claim, she lashed out at them: ‘Is it funny? ‘Cause they did it. You wanna talk fascism, that’s fascist.’ 

Once the audience settled, Maher closed the topic by saying: ‘I think history is not gonna be kind to your point of view.’ 

John Kelly (right), Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief-of-staff, has down on claims that the former president was a fan of Adolf Hitler and warns he would ‘govern like a dictator if allowed. Kelly and Trump are pictured together in June 2018

General John Kelly, who was Trump’s White House chief of staff for 18 months, this week called his former boss was the ‘definition of fascist’.

He claimed Trump once said ‘Hitler did some good things’ and praised the Nazi dictator for having ‘rebuilt the economy’. 

Kelly also told The Atlantic on Tuesday that Trump said he wanted his staff to be more like ‘German generals in World War II‘ because they were ‘totally loyal’ to Hitler.

He claimed Trump ‘certainly prefers the dictator approach to government’ and ‘never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world’.

Reading a textbook definition of fascism aloud during an audio interview with the New York Times, he compared to to Trump’s world view.

He described the ideology as 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’.

Kelly said, in ‘my experience’, he found Trump to believe those ideologies would ‘work better in terms of running America’.

Trump and Kelly together in October 2017 during a briefing with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House 

He also clamed Trump was annoyed by limitations on his power and desired the ‘ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted’, which Kelly claimed was Trump’s experience in the business world.

In a separate interview with The Atlantic, Kelly claimed Trump became more interested in the ‘advantages of dictatorship’ and having ‘absolute control over the military’ as his Oval Office term neared its close.

‘I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders,’ he claimed Trump said during a private conversation in the White House.

The Trump campaign hit back at Kelly’s claims in a statement to the NYT, saying the former political advisor ‘has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated’.

It also denied the conversation Kelly recounted to The Atlantic, saying: ‘This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this.’