ICYMI

Donald Trump Suggests Using Military to Stop ‘Radical Left’ on Election Day: ‘The Enemy from Within’

Danielle Jennings
Tue, October 15, 2024 

In a Fox News interview, Trump said that "lunatic" Democrats like Adam Schiff, who led his first impeachment trial, are "tough to handle" enemies that pose bigger national threats than Russia and China



Spencer Platt/GettyDonald Trump

Former President Donald Trump recently made a suggestion that the military could be used to shut down “radical left lunatics.”

During an interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures on Sunday, Oct. 13, Trump was asked about President Joe Biden’s previous comment that he fears there could be chaos from MAGA supporters on Election Day.


The former president reacted by saying he does not think his supporters — who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent Biden's election victory from being certified in Congress — will ignite chaos, saying the real election threat is "the enemy from within."

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” he continued. “And I think 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.”

Related: Donald Trump Compared to Hitler After Vowing to Invoke 1700s Law Used to Justify Japanese Internment Camps

Bill Pugliano/GettyDonald Trump

Though the context of Trump's initial remark implied that he was talking about policing militant people stirring up trouble on Election Day, the former president dug a deeper hole for himself by also telling Fox News that Democrats like California Rep. Adam Schiff — who led the prosecution in Trump's first impeachment trial — are part of the "enemy from within."


"The thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff," he said later in the interview. He then called those people "more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries."

Related: Trump Secretly Shared COVID-19 Tests with Putin and Stayed in Touch After Presidency, Bob Woodward Claims

AP/Shutterstock House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California, on Jan. 22, 2020

Following the comment about policing liberals with the National Guard or military, Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign responded, stating that Trump’s remarks should "alarm every American who cares about their freedom and security."

In a statement shared with The Hill, Harris’ senior campaign adviser and senior spokesperson Ian Sams said, "Donald Trump is suggesting that his fellow Americans are worse ‘enemies’ than foreign adversaries, and he is saying he would use the military against them."

Related: Trump’s Rumored AG Candidate Warns of Retaliation Against Liberal Prosecutors, Judges, Witnesses: 'Go to Hell'

Sams continued by calling attention to Trump's previous claim that he would briefly be a "dictator" if he took office in January 2025.

"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."

Steven Ferdman/GC ImagesDonald Trump

Trump's new remark about the "radical left" comes after a series of aggressive statements about how he will handle his adversaries if elected president.

When Fox News' Laura Ingraham recently asked him to confirm that he wouldn't weaponize the justice system against his political enemies, he said that "a lot of people" want him to do just that.

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After Trump baselessly accused Biden and Harris of playing politics with hurricane relief efforts, two former White House officials alleged that it was Trump who wielded disaster aid as a political tool during his presidency, refusing to provide California with federal relief for a 2018 wildfire until they showed him that the affected area was Republican-leaning.

Trump seemingly vowed to do it again while speaking to California voters on the campaign trail in October, threatening that he would refuse to give the heavily Democratic state "fire money" down the road if the governor doesn't meet his demands.

Related: Donald Trump Threatens to Deny California Federal Disaster Aid as President If They Don’t Do What He Asks

The idea of using the military to police liberals hits at a similar theme found in Project 2025, a far-right playbook for Trump's presidency that was drafted by his allies, about refocusing federal agents.

The Project 2025 mandate suggests that the FBI should be overhauled to increase federal law enforcement presence in select areas of the U.S. where the administration believes its laws aren't being enforced strictly enough.

It also advises that a potential Trump administration should sue local government officials who don't prosecute crimes to the administration's liking.


Trump’s threat to deploy military against ‘radical left’ draws backlash

Ellen Mitchell
Wed, October 16, 2024 

Trump’s threat to deploy military against ‘radical left’ draws backlash

Former President Trump’s suggestion that U.S. troops could be used to go after “radical-left lunatics” following the presidential election has alarmed those in the military community and bolstered Democratic warnings about the dangers of a second Trump term.

Trump, who warned Sunday that he could deploy active or National Guard troops to counter the “enemy from within,” quickly drew condemnation from Vice President Harris’s campaign, which said the comments “should alarm every American who cares about their freedom and security.” Harris herself called Trump “increasingly unstable and unhinged” during her Monday campaign rally in Erie, Pa.

Trump has suggested deploying the military within U.S. borders before, and his former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the public should take Trump’s comments “seriously.”

“Yes I do, of course,” Esper said Monday evening on CNN when asked whether he fears Trump would try to utilize the military against U.S. citizens.

“Because I lived through that, and I saw over the summer of 2020 where President Trump and those around him wanted to use the National Guard in various capacities in cities such as Chicago and Portland and Seattle,” Esper said.

Trump, in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday, dismissed President Biden’s concerns that Election Day wouldn’t be peaceful and said he thinks “the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroyed our country.”

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics,” Trump said.

“And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by [the] National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” he continued.

The remarks quickly drew outrage from the left, with Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), calling Trump’s comments “dangerous” and “un-American.”

“As someone who wore this nation’s uniform proudly … the idea of sending U.S. military personnel against American citizens makes me sick to my stomach,” said Walz, who served for 24 years in the Army National Guard before running for public office.

“It’s a call for violence, plain and simple. And it’s pretty damn un-American if you ask me,” he told attendees at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Monday.

The GOP presidential nominee wouldn’t immediately have command of U.S. troops should he win in November and would only gain control following the inauguration in mid-January.

Former New York Rep. Max Rose (D), a senior adviser to liberal veterans group VoteVets who serves in the Army Reserve, said what Trump and his associates are seeking to do “is not just weaponize the military but actually try to replace leaders in the military who stand up against him and follow the rule of law.”

Speaking Monday evening on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle,” he added: “It just shows yet again how serious and grave these coming days are, not just this one election, but the future of this country.”

And retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner said he feared Trump could use the National Guard as “his own personal police force.”

“If he was to be the commander in chief again, everything changes. The Supreme Court has given him immunity,” Manner said on CNN. “And the threshold for turning the National Guard into his personal police force is quite low.”

Manner explained that as long as Trump had a consenting state governor, he could authorize the funds to pay them and “use the National Guard almost in any way that he wants.”

“Most Americans don’t know how very easy it would be for an unhinged president to use the military against our own citizens,” he added.

Pushback from Republicans on Trump’s comments, meanwhile, has been virtually nonexistent.

Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.) appeared to be the lone Republican to publicly break from Trump on Tuesday, saying “we’re not going to have” the U.S. military deployed inside U.S. borders.

“Obviously we don’t want to have the United States military — we’re not going to have that be deployed in the United States,” Donalds said Monday on CNN. “That’s been long-standing law in our country since the founding of the republic.”

Donalds was among the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election results in January 2021.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) sparred with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday over the comments, with Youngkin refusing to accept that Trump was threatening to deploy U.S. troops against his political enemies.

This isn’t the first time Trump has suggested using the military to accomplish his political goals, as he has previously opined using troops to aid in the mass deportation of immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Trump also used the National Guard along with U.S. Park Police to clear Lafayette Square of protesters in the summer of 2020 so he could walk from the White House and pose for a photo in front of a historic church.

That incident came just after Trump delivered remarks declaring himself “your president of law and order,” calling on governors to deploy National Guard units and “dominate the streets” amid sweeping racial justice protests.

He also has talked of weeding out military officers who don’t share his ideology and “moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas” to the southern border, according to his platform known as Agenda 47.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog organization, scoured more than 13,000 of Trump’s Truth Social posts from Jan. 1, 2023, to April 1, 2024, and found that he vowed at least 19 times to weaponize law enforcement against civilians, including multiple branches of the military.

While the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act largely prohibits active duty troops from carrying out law enforcement duties inside the United States, Trump’s supporters have cited the Insurrection Act of 1807 as a possible law he could use to get around that.

The 200-year-old statute, meant to curb rebellions, was used during the Civil War and during the Civil Rights Movement. It was last used by then-President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

The law says the president, as commander in chief, can call on American troops if there’s been “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

Whether the law could be legally applied to Trump’s political goals remains to be seen.

What’s far more likely to come to fruition, should Trump return to the White House, is his plan to remove military officials that don’t see eye to eye with him; the president is responsible for promoting officers in the military, though they would have to be approved by the Senate.

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