Trump’s 'enemies' rhetoric deemed disqualifying by experts
Story by David Badash
• 11h • 4 min read
Donald Trump’s latest claim, that Russia, China, and North Korea, “might not be enemies,” but top Democrats, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep Adam Schiff are, has angered many on the left and led experts to issue warnings against the ex-president.
Continuing his refusal to grant interviews to non-friendly media outlets, Trump
told Fox News’ Howard Kurtz on Sunday those three authoritarian regimes, the “outside people, the so-called enemies, if they’re enemies—and they might not be enemies.”
“You talk about the enemy within,” Kurtz had told Trump, “America’s enemies outside, [but] the enemy within is a pretty ominous phrase if you’re talking about other Americans. Who are you talking about?”
“I think that’s accurate,” Trump responded before attacking Pelosi and Schiff and promoting a series of falsehoods and lies.
“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people,” Trump said. “But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yeah, they are to me, the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.”
“But when you have people investigating my campaign, when you have people, you know, they spied of my campaign now, you understand that. That’s been proven,” Trump alleged, which Kurtz later was forced to say on-camera was “in dispute.”
“But they spy on your campaign, the Russia Russia Russia hoax was was all made up, and now it’s acknowledged that it was made up. All of these different things, you have the 51 different agents saying it was from Russia, and now they all say it wasn’t from Russia, okay, so we were like, all many other things, many, many, I could be you just don’t have enough time.”
“But what they’ve done is so terrible. Who’s ever heard of anything like this?” Trump baselessly alleged before attacking the two Democratic members of the U.S. Congress, again, with falsehoods.
“Adam shifty Schiff,” Trump continued. “He’s a crooked guy. He’s a crooked politician 100 percent. He’s going to be a senator now. Can you believe it? But again… he’s an enemy’s an enemy. He wanted to put my son in jail, and my son didn’t even know what he was talking about. He wanted to put my son in jail on a scam that he made up. Called Russia, Russia, Russia. He, Hillary Clinton, and a group of people made up a scam. And they came out of a room and they said, Donald Trump, Jr. will be going to jail over this.”
“That’s an enemy from within. That’s really – that is a threat to democracy. These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at Shifty Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are to me, the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within. She lied. She was supposed to protect the Capitol,” Trump said, again,
falsely.
“I want to drill down on this question of retribution, because against your political opponents, because you’ve had opportunities to walk that back,” Kurtz had also said. “And my question is this, are you prepared to say now that you will not use law enforcement to punish or prosecute your political opponents?
“Excuse me,” Trump replied. “That’s what they’re using on me.”
Nearly two weeks ago Trump had said he
wants to use the U.S. military against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.
“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally. But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with. that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said. “I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”
Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian, professor, and scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders and frequent MSNBC guest issued a warning in response to Trump’s remarks to Kurtz (clip below): “This is all you need to know to vote Democrat in 2024.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul,
warned: “Putin is a not a ‘so-called’ enemy of the free world. He is the greatest threat to our allies and partners in Europe since Hitler. That Trump cannot grasp this basic fact makes him unqualified to served as commander in chief.”
In 2017, less than one month into his presidency,
USA Today posted a report: “Donald Trump’s ties to Russia go back 30 years.”
www.ksl.com
www.foxnews.com
