It can’t be pleasant for Melania Trump and Marla Maples to hear Donald Trump, the man they both married and had children with, being compared to Adolf Hitler and accused of having fascist tendencies.

But Trump’s Democratic rival Kamala Harris, her supporters and even some former Trump officials have stepped up the rhetoric about the dangers they say the former president poses to American democracy.

Last week the vice president declared: “Donald Trump is out for unchecked power. He wants a military like Adolf Hitler had, who will be loyal to him, not our Constitution. He is unhinged, unstable, and given a second term, there would be no one to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses.”

Former Trump administration chief of staff John Kelly also came forward in a New York Times interview and said, in his opinion, that Trump “met the definition of a fascist.” Kelly said that Trump is “an authoritarian,” who would govern like a dictator if allowed, and he has no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law. Kelly also said that Trump made admiring statements about Hitler, once arguing, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”

Trump and his supporters have denied the fascist claims. Maples, Trump’s second wife, also expressed alarm about Harris’ statement after seeing Elon Musk claim on X that her words are “a major incitement to violence.”

Maples was married to Trump from 1993 to 1999 after the two started an affair while he was still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump. Maples shared Musk’s post, with a statement defending the father of her now-31-year-old daughter Tiffany.

Donald Trump dips his new bride Marla Maples after couple married in a private ceremony at the Plaza Hotel, in New York, 20 December 1993. They divorced in 1999. (Photo by BOB STRONG/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is my daughter’s father and they are spreading such horrific lies about him & they keep getting worse,” Maples wrote on X. “Our daughter Tiffany grew up learning not only to pray as a Christian but also in Hebrew & Aramaic (Christs language).”

Maples then asserted that her ex-husband deserves people’s votes because he has risked his life for “all Americans.” She was no doubt referring to him being the target of two assassination plots in recent months.

The defense of Trump’s character was continued Tuesday by his current wife, Melania Trump, the Daily Beast reported. During a friendly interview on “Fox & Friends,” the campaign-shy former first lady aired her grievances against people who she says have “betrayed” her, the Daily Beast reported.

Similar to Maples, she also insisted that her husband is “not Hitler.”

When co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Lawrence Jones asked Melania Trump how she felt about a recent spate of allegations by former Trump officials, who have called her husband a fascist — “they’re calling your husband a second Hitler,” Jones said — she quickly rejected them.

“It’s terrible,” Melania Trump said. “He’s not Hitler and all of his supporters, they’re standing behind him because they want to see (the) country (be) successful.”

Melania Trump may feel she has some authority on this subject. In her new memoir, the former model from Slovenia says that her family was impacted by World War II. She wrote that her mother was born in 1945 in Austria because her family had been displaced from their hometown in Slovenia. Her father, meanwhile, was born in the town of Radeče during the German occupation of Slovenia.