Former President Donald Trump remained adamant that Democrats are “enemies from within" during a taped town hall interview on Fox News on Tuesday night, NBC reported.
The Republican nominee previously made the comment about Democrats on Fox News’ “Sunday Futures,” when he referred to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and other prominent Dems as “lunatics” and a threat to national security.
“I always say, we have two enemies, we have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries,” Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
He also suggested deploying the military on “radical left lunatics” to deal with potential Election Day chaos.
Vice President Kamala Harris was quick to point out the authoritarian nature of Trump’s comments at a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
“He considers anyone who doesn’t support or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of the country,” Harris told the crowd. “It’s a serious issue.” She added that a second Trump term would be a “huge risk for America and dangerous.”
“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged,” said the Democratic nominee.
But Trump defended his comments on Tuesday night, telling Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and the audience of all-women voters that he, nor his comments are unhinged. The 78-year-old maintained that Democrats are “sick” and “evil,” according to reporting from NBC.
“We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil,” Trump said.
The town hall interview taped in Cumming, Georgia will air Wednesday morning.
Trump's critics have increasingly sounded the alarm over the former president's rhetoric.
“There is not a case in American history where a presidential candidate has run for office on a promise that they would exact retribution against anyone they perceive as not supporting them in the campaign,” Ian Bassin, a former associate White House counsel who heads the advocacy group Protect Democracy, told The New York Times. “It’s so fundamentally, outrageously beyond the pale of how this country has worked that it’s hard to articulate how insane it is.”
