Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures to the audience as he departs a campaign rally at the Calhoun Ranch, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, in Coachella, Calif. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Former president Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday that he is worried about the prospect of unspecified actions by what he dubbed “radical left lunatics” on Election Day, urging that the National Guard or U.S. military be deployed on American soil against those he labeled “the enemy from within.”
In the interview that aired on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” host Maria Bartiromo asked Trump whether he was “expecting chaos on Election Day,” then listed off what she called “outside agitators,” such as people on the terrorist watch list or migrants who have committed crimes.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump replied. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.”
Trump added: “It 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.”
When asked for additional clarification about what Trump meant in his interview, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung equated the prospect of unspecified efforts by the left during the elections with the recent arrest of an Afghan man in Oklahoma, who is accused of plotting an Election Day attack in the United States in the name of the Islamic State group.
“President Trump is 100% correct — those who seek to undermine democracy by sowing chaos in our elections are a direct threat, just like the terrorist from Afghanistan that was arrested for plotting multiple attacks on Election Day within the United States,” Cheung said in a statement.
The “enemy from within,” Trump argued in a later portion of the interview with Bartiromo, “is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries.” He added that some politicians fell into that category.
“The thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff,” the former president added, referring to the California Democrat running for Senate.
Schiff, a member of the House, was the lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial and served as the top-ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence throughout Trump’s term in office. For years, the congressman has been a frequent target of Trump’s attacks.
“I call him the enemy from within,” Trump said of Schiff, repeating a term he used against the congressman on Saturday evening during a rally in Coachella, Calif.
During the speech — held in a state Trump is almost certain to lose — the former president repeated falsehoods about migrants and sought to portray the country in apocalyptic terms.
He described the elections on Nov. 5 as “liberation day,” comparing the United States to an “occupied country.” He also suggested that a heckler would later get “the hell knocked out of her.”
In a statement, Harris campaign senior spokesperson Ian Sams said Trump “is suggesting that his fellow Americans are worse ‘enemies’ than foreign adversaries, and he is saying he would use the military against them.”
“Taken with his vow to be a dictator on ‘day one,’ calls for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution, and plans to surround himself with sycophants who will give him unchecked, unprecedented power if he returns to office, this should alarm every American who cares about their freedom and security,” Sams added. “What Donald Trump is promising is dangerous, and returning him to office is simply a risk Americans cannot afford.”
Trump’s use of the military on American soil was tested to its limits during his term in office, with Trump pushing to deploy military personnel amid the 2020 protests following the death of George Floyd. He also sent National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a potential second term, Trump and his allies are seeking to militarize immigration enforcement, with the candidate saying on the trail that as president he would immediately launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
The model for the operation points to an Eisenhower-era program that used military tactics to round up and deport migrants. The program transported them in dangerous conditions that led to some deaths.
Hannah Knowles and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
