Republicans Try to Rewrite Trump’s Threat to Use Military Against Citizens

Over the weekend, Donald Trump crystalized his authoritarian vision for the nation when he suggested siccing the military on his political opponents and American citizens to destroy the “enemy from within.” Despite the former president’s direct appeal to full-blown fascism, Republicans are lining up to defend and downplay his comments. 

​​“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday when asked if he anticipated “chaos on Election Day” from undocumented immigrants. “We have some very bad people, some sick people, radical left lunatics. … And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

On Monday, Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin attempted to rewrite Trump’s comments as concerns about immigration, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that what the former president was talking about was the “people coming over the border,” and that Tapper was “misrepresenting and misinterpreting” Trump’s comments. 

Tapper countered: “I’m literally reading his quotes to you, and I played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me. He’s literally talking about ‘radical left lunatics,’ and then one of those ‘lunatics’ he mentioned was Congressman Adam Schiff.”

The governor insisted that he didn’t “believe” that that’s what Trump meant. 

“You can wish that he wasn’t saying that, but that’s what he said,” Tapper replied. 

Youngkin is not the only Trump ally attempting to whitewash his comments. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), was asked by reporters on Monday to respond to the former president’s comments. Vance said that the justification for use of military force against Americans “depends on what’s actually happening.”

“I wanna be clear here, I’m not painting the entire Democratic Party with a broad brush,” Vance explained. “I’m painting the leadership and the far left activists.” 
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“We saw this in the summer of 2020 — we certainly saw some of this after the election in 2016 — there is a core group of far-left activists who are willing to threaten, harass, and commit violence against their fellow citizens,” Vance insisted. “If that happens, if you have a major reaction to an election in 2024 of course you ought to commit law enforcement resources to bring order back to our cities.” 

Vance remains committed to the lie that Trump won the 2020 election and has stated that if he had been vice president when Trump sought to overturn the electoral college certification, he would have entertained the GOP plot to usurp the results. While the president has the authority to activate the National Guard in response to mass unrest and violence, as was done on Jan. 6 when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the president does not have the authority to use the Guard or the military on American citizens in order to target his political adversaries. 

On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Mike Waltz insisted to CNN that the former president hadn’t actually said what he said. “I don’t think that’s what he said. I think you’re connecting some dots there,” Waltz told host John Berman. Like Vance, Waltz referenced 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests as an appropriate use of the National Guard against civilians. When Berman pressed on whether he thought it was responsible for a candidate to discuss deploying the military against his political opponents, Waltz ducked the question. 

As much as the former president’s current allies would like to downplay the former president’s threat, at least one former Trump administration official is sounding the alarm about exactly how serious he is. On Monday, former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “we should take those words seriously.” 
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Esper noted how Trump had previously floated using the military and National Guard to quell protests, and a moment in 2020 — described in Esper’s book A Sacred Oath — in which Trump suggested having the military shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in the legs. 

“The good news is [that] I don’t think he has the authority under the law to use the military unless it was some type of civil disobedience or insurrection,” Esper said of the possibility that Trump may use the military to enforce election outcomes. 
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The Harris campaign has seized on Trump’s comments as the crowning example of the former president’s authoritarian ambitions. At a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, the vice president played a compilation of Trump attacking the so-called “enemy from within,” and threatening to jail his political opponents. 

“He considers anyone who doesn’t support him, or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of out country,” Harris told the crowd. “A second Trump term is a huge risk for America. He is increasingly unstable and unhinged. And he is out for unchecked power and control over your lives.”