Trump’s Complete “Enemy Within” and Adam Schiff Comment on Fox

former president Donald Trump’s interview with Maria Bartiromo in his weekend show, Sunday morning futures, grabbed headlines all week as Trump was criticized for using the phrase “enemy within” to describe some on the left, including the Rep. Adam Schiff (R-CA). Trump also said that to “handle” the “enemy within” he might have to use the National Guard or the US military; the two comments were made at separate times during the interview.

Since then, Trump’s comments have become a hot topic on the campaign trail, as people like his former Pentagon chief, Mark Esper, warned that they should be taken “seriously” as further evidence of Trump’s authoritarian bent and willingness to arm the government against his critics.

Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin (R) denied Trump made the comments when asked about them by CNN Jake Tapper. Youngkin argued that Trump was not referring to American citizens as the “enemy within,” adding, “I don’t think he’s referring to elected people in the United States.”

Fox anchor Bret Baier apologized Thursday night, saying that when he asked the vice president Kamala Harris to react to the clip during his sit-down interview showed him the wrong moment. Baier’s team showed Trump responding to the backlash during a Fox News town hall Wednesday rather than the actual comment Trump made to Bartiromo, prompting a fiery correction from Harris, who has been citing the comment during his demonstrations

“I meant I was wrong. When I asked for a bite, I was hoping that the ‘enemy from within’ bit from Maria Bartiromo’s interview would be tied to the part of your town hall, Harris, where you ask the former president on “the enemy from within. He just had the piece on the town hall. Just listen to what he wanted to shoot,” Baier on his panel, which included the Fox anchor Harris Faulkner who moderated Trump’s town hall.

Here’s a full transcript and clip of that part of Trump’s interview with Bartiromo:

Bartiromo: What do you expect? Joe Biden said he doesn’t think it will be a peaceful election day.

Trump: Well, he has no idea what’s going on, in all fairness. He spends most of the day sleeping. I think the biggest problem is the enemy from within, not even the people who have come in, and destroying our country, and by the way, totally destroying our country. Cities and towns are being flooded. But I don’t think they have the problem regarding election day. I think the biggest problem is the people inside. We have very bad people. We have some sick, radical leftist lunatics. And I believe And it should be very easy to handle, if necessary, by the National Guard or if it’s really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.

Bartiromo: In February you told me you were going to rent Madison Square Garden for a rally. yes And now you will at the end of October.

Trump: Not just Madison Square Garden, we’re taking 4 or 5 arenas. We fill them very quickly. As you know, we picked up where the Islanders play on Long Island.

Some Trump supporters, like Youngkin, appeared to address only that part of Trump’s remarks to Bartiromo. Although Trump explicitly says that “the enemy within” does not refer to “the people who have come in,” many have argued that he was referring solely to migrants or “outside agitators.” In particular, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the president generally does not have the power to use the military against US citizens domestically, to quell riots. Trump would have to invoke emergency powers, such as the Insurrection Act, to do so.

Later in the interview, Bartiromo asked Trump what “you’re going to do to protect yourself from bureaucrats, undermining you? In a second term.”

Trump replied: “Well, I always say that. We have two enemies. We have the enemy without, and then we have the enemy within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries. Because if you have an intelligent president, I have handled them all very well. But what is more difficult to handle them we have inside”. He added:

i like Adam SchiffAdam “Shifty” Schiff, I think this guy is going to be a senator. He’s running against a guy who doesn’t understand politics at all. Garvey. But, he was a good baseball player, but he doesn’t understand politics at all. Adam “Shifty” Schiff, who is a total sleazebag, will become a senator. But I call it the enemy from within. When you look at the danger that he put our country in and potentially with Russia with a fake made up deal that he made with Hillary and some bad people, you know, that started as an excuse for why he lost an election that a lot of people he thought he should have won because the polls indicated he could win. And then she was hit everywhere virtually.

When you look at this and then they said, ahhh, it was Russia, they use that as an excuse and then fake news picked it up. And while you’re at it, let’s talk about the single biggest scandal, in my opinion, in the history of broadcasting, 60 Minutes and CBS interviewed Kamala. And she is incompetent.

Bartiromo addressed the controversy surrounding his interview with Trump on his Fox Business show on Thursday. “Trump didn’t say he wanted the National Guard against the politicians inside. He was referring to the outside agitators of my question,” Bartiromo said, adding:

But knit a lot and it will tell you that. He will say, ‘Look, I have to knit, I go here, I go there, and then I always come back. Answer your question. So maybe it was confusing, but I wasn’t clear what he was answering with that answer, I understood specifically what he was talking about. They were outside agitators.

“How did you see it?” he then asked his panelist Miquel Balboni, a former New York State Representative. “So if anyone in this nation has to think about what the foreign agitator quote is, all they have to do is look at what happened on the campuses of this country last spring, these debates and protests anti-Israel, the violent actions that happened in the universities were as a result of the Hamas agitators who are in this country. We know that they are here and they are stirring everything”, he replied to the agreement of Bartiromo.

Trump has also used the “enemy within” rhetoric in the past and doubled down on it again, also naming Schiff, during the OutKick. Maintenance with Tyrus Friday podcast, hosted by the Fox News contributor Tyrus.

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