Former President Trump doubled down on his insistence that his political rivals are “the enemy from within,” even after similar comments drew backlash and became a centerpiece of one of Vice President Harris’s campaign rallies.
Trump sat for a Fox News town hall with a friendly audience of women voters in Georgia, where host Harris Faulkner played a clip of the former president saying in a recent interview that his Democratic opponents were the “enemy within” and suggested the military could quell unrest.
“I don’t know, I thought it was a nice presentation. That wasn’t unhinged. No, you know what they are, they’re a party of sound bites,” Trump said at the town hall, which was recorded Tuesday and aired Wednesday on “The Faulkner Focus.”
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous,” Trump continued. “They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick.”
Trump went on to single out Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“These people — they’re so sick, and they’re so evil. If they would spend their time trying to make America great again, it would be so easy to make this country great,” Trump said. “I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations.”
Trump has faced scrutiny since he said in an interview Sunday with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo that the bigger threat to the country than foreign adversaries was “people from within.” He added that any unrest from his critics after the election “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Harris, his opponent in November’s election, played footage of Trump’s comments at a rally this week in Pennsylvania and called the former president “unstable and unhinged.”
The former president has in the past used incendiary language to describe his opponents, calling them “scum” and “vermin,” drawing comparisons to the rhetoric of dictators.
But his threat to use the military to quell protests has raised alarms among Democrats who have long argued Trump would rule as an authoritarian if he is reelected.
“Those who know Donald Trump best and worked alongside him are warning us about the risk of a second Trump term, where he would have virtually unchecked power and no guardrails even as he is increasingly unhinged and unstable,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Americans know we cannot afford a second Trump term, and there’s only one candidate in this race focused on turning the page on the chaos and charting a new way forward – Vice President Kamala Harris.”