‘So evil’ and ‘dangerous’: Trump doubles down on calling Democrats ‘enemies from within’
Nnamdi Egwuonwu and Raquel Coronell Uribe – October 15, 2024
‘So evil’ and ‘dangerous’: Trump doubles down on calling Democrats ‘enemies from within’
CUMMING, Ga. — Former President Donald Trump doubled down Tuesday on his remarks over the weekend referring to Democrats as the “enemy from within.”
During a taped town hall of all-women voters in Cumming, Georgia, with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, the host asked Trump about his “enemy from within” comment, which he made during the network’s “Sunday Morning Futures” this past weekend.
During that interview, Trump told host Maria Bartiromo that California Rep. Adam Schiff and other Democrats were “lunatics” and a bigger threat to the U.S. than foreign adversaries like Russia or China.
“I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said, adding: “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.”
He also suggested that the military could be called in to handle any unrest on Election Day from “radical left lunatics.”
Trump doubled down on those comments during his Tuesday night town hall, also calling Democrats “evil” and “dangerous.”
“They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick,” Trump added. “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 airs at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris has used Trump’s comments against him this week, calling a second Trump term “dangerous” at a Pennsylvania rally and releasing an ad titled “Enemy Within.”
Harris called Trump “increasingly unstable and unhinged,” saying he plans to use the military against American citizens and is “out for unchecked power.”
“A second Trump term is a huge risk for America,” she told supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Faulkner gave Trump a chance to clarify his comments Tuesday at the town hall taping, asking him how he responded to Harris’ claims that he was “unhinged” and “out for unchecked power.”
Trump defended his comments, calling them “a nice presentation.”
“I wasn’t unhinged,” Trump said.
He also doubled down on his claims about Schiff, who led the prosecution in his first Senate impeachment trial.
“I use a guy like Adam Schiff because they made up the Russia, Russia hoax,” Trump said. “It took two years to solve the problem. Absolutely nothing was done wrong, etc, etc. They’re dangerous for our country.”
Asked to comment on Trump’s Tuesday remarks, a Schiff spokesman pointed to a pair of postson X that the congressman in response to Trump’s Sunday interview.
“Donald Trump is openly threatening to call in the military to suppress his political opponents,” one of the posts reads. “We must defeat him this November and never let him fulfill his dictatorial ambitions.”
Representatives for Harris’ campaign and Pelosi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump in Chicago interview defends call for tariffs on imports, does not commit to peaceful concession if he loses
Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune – October 15, 2024
CHICAGO — Former President Donald Trump used an appearance before the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday to deliver a strong defense for using tariffs on foreign imports to grow jobs and the economy, dismissing criticism it could lead to consumer price increases and a resurgence of inflation if he is elected.
The Republican presidential nominee also warned that the country is on the verge of World War III because of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and questioned the intelligence of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential contender, to solve economic and foreign issues.
Trump’s unusual visit to a nonbattleground state with three weeks left in the campaign lacked any mention of his long-standing criticisms of Chicago and violence. He offered the more than 500 people in attendance, largely major business executives supportive of his campaign, a backhanded compliment by noting that he appeared before the Detroit Economic Club last week and, “I think you people are probably even wealthier. OK?”
The former president also veered wildly from questions posed to him by John Micklethwait, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and restated past criticisms of the “fake media” and “corrupt press.”
Asked about a potential Justice Department move to break up Google parent Alphabet, Trump complained that its search engine’s algorithms display a preponderance of negative stories about him.
“I think it’s a whole rigged deal. I think Google’s rigged, just like our government is rigged,” he said. But he stopped short of saying the tech giant should be broken up.
He again defended the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by Trump supporters seeking to block President Joe Biden’s Electoral College certification and claimed there had been a “peaceful transfer of power.” But Trump did not commit to a peaceful concession should he lose to Harris in November.
Trump has touted imposing tariffs as part of his protectionist America First agenda for restoring and bringing in jobs and new manufacturing into the United States, most often citing China as a major threat.
But in speaking for just more than an hour at a downtown hotel ballroom, Trump also warned that U.S. allies, including members of the European Union, Japan and South Korea, had taken advantage of import rules at the expense of the United States’ economic well-being.
“Our allies have taken advantage of us more so than our enemies,” Trump said.
“They screw us on trade, so bad the European nations,” he said, adding to it the cost of U.S. support for NATO, “so they’re taking tremendous advantage of us.”
With an estimated 40 million U.S. jobs that rely on trade, accounting for more than a quarter of the nation’s gross domestic product, Trump said his answer was an easy one for companies wanting to avoid tariffs and the higher costs associated with their goods.
“All you have to do is build your plant in the United States, and you don’t have any tariffs,” he said.
Economists have repeatedly argued tariffs would amount to a national sales tax. Asked about the contention the tariffs would hit consumers on the roughly $3 trillion worth of current imports, Trump said, “The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff.”
For the auto industry, Trump threatened tariffs of as high as “2,000%” to prevent foreign companies from importing cars. He said the move would price those companies out of the American consumer market unless those car companies begin building new and more manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
Trump spoke of the decline of the U.S. steel industry until he imposed tariffs on Chinese steel. He also repeated his opposition to the potential acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel.
“There are certain companies you have to have. There are certain things you have to have. Steel, you have to have if you go to war,” Trump said. “While we’re talking about it, we have never been so close to World War III as we are right now with what’s going on in Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East.”
On the neck-and-neck Nov. 5 presidential election, Trump reiterated many of his insults he’s made about Harris on the campaign trail.
“I never thought I’d say this: She is not as smart as Biden if you can put it that way. We had four years of this lunacy and we can’t have anymore. We’re not going to have a country left,” Trump said.
Trump also continued to voice his baseless grievance that the 2020 election was stolen from him, saying he believed the election was “100%” crooked. Speaking about Jan. 6 again, he said his supporters had a right to protest and said of the day of the attack that “it was love and peace” and then “some people went to the Capitol, and a lot of strange things happened.”
The former president also lied when he said none of the Capitol rioters had a gun. As a result of the attack, there were 129 people charged with ‘using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer,” the Poynter Institute found.
It was Trump’s first public appearance in Chicago since his July 31 conversation before the National Association of Black Journalists convention in which he notably questioned the racial identity of Harris, the first Black and Asian American woman to become a major party’s presidential nominee.
Trump sandwiched the trip to Chicago between a visit Monday evening for a rally in suburban Philadelphia that was cut short due to people who became overheated and a Tuesday evening appearance in Atlanta for a “town hall” on women’s issues.
Democrats have been using the Supreme Court’s reversal of a federal right to abortion to try to motivate women voters to cast ballots opposing Trump and down ballot Republicans for their anti-abortion stance.
In addition to economic clubs in Chicago and Detroit, Trump also visited the Economic Club of New York in September, where he said revenue from tariffs would more than cover the need to help provide child care assistance for working parents.
“We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s — relatively speaking — not very expensive, compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in,” he said.
Trump vows to levy ‘horrible’ tariffs on imports, rejecting fears of inflation spike
Jennifer Shutt – October 15, 2024
The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Oct. 15, spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago. In this photo, he speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse on Sept. 25 in Mint Hill, North Carolina. (Brandon Bell | Getty Images)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his plans for steep tariffs on Tuesday, arguing economists who say that those higher costs would get passed onto consumers are incorrect and that his proposals would benefit American manufacturing.
During an argumentative hour-long interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump vehemently denied tariffs on certain imported goods would lead to further spikes in inflation and sour America’s relationship with allies, including those in Europe.
“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said.
Micklethwait questioned Trump about what would happen to consumer prices during the months or even years it would take companies to build factories in the United States and hire workers.
Trump responded that he could make tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they’ll come right away.” Earlier during the interview, Trump mentioned placing tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.
Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Joseph Costello wrote in a statement released following the interview that “Trump showed exactly why Americans can’t afford a second Trump presidency.”
“An angry, rambling Donald Trump couldn’t focus, had to be repeatedly reminded of the topic at hand, and whenever he did stake out a position, it was so extreme that no Americans would want it,” Costello wrote. “This was yet another reminder that a second Trump term is a risk Americans simply cannot take.”
Smoot-Hawley memories
Micklethwait noted during the interview that 40 million jobs and 27% of gross domestic product within the United States rely on trade, questioning how tariffs on those products would help the economy.
He also asked Trump if his plans for tariffs could lead the country down a similar path to the one that followed the Smoot-Hawley tariff law becoming law in June 1930. Signed by President Herbert Hoover, some historians and economists have linked the law to the beginning of the Great Depression.
Trump disagreed with Micklethwait, though he didn’t detail why his proposals to increase tariffs on goods from adversarial nations as well as U.S. allies wouldn’t begin a trade war.
The U.S. Senate’s official explainer on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs describes the law as being “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” And the Congressional Research Services notes in a report on U.S. tariff policy that it was the last time lawmakers set tariff rates.
Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, wrote last month that Trump’s proposal to implement tariffs of at least 60% on goods imported from China as well as 10 to 20% on all other imports could have severe economic consequences.
“It is difficult to see how such a unilateral trade policy in flagrant violation of World Trade Organization rules would not lead to retaliation by our trade partners with import tariff increases of their own,” Lachman wrote. “As in the 1930s, that could lead us down the destructive path of beggar-my-neighbor trade policies that could cause major disruption to the international trade system. Such an occurrence would be particularly harmful to our export industries and would heighten the chances of both a US and worldwide economic recession.”
CRS notes in its reports that while the Constitution grants Congress the authority to establish tariffs, lawmakers have given the president some authority over it as well.
The United States’ membership in the World Trade Organization and various other trade agreements also have “tariff-related commitments,” according to CRS.
“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the CRS report states. “This delegation insulated Congress from domestic pressures and led to an overall decline in global tariff rates. However, it has meant that the U.S. pursuit of a low-tariff, rules-based global trading system has been the product of executive discretion. While Congress has set negotiating goals, it has relied on Presidential leadership to achieve those goals.”
The presidency and the Fed
Trump said during the interview that he believes the president should have more input into whether the Federal Reserve raises or lowers interest rates, though he didn’t answer a question about keeping Jerome Powell as the chairman through the end of his term.
“I think I have the right to say I think he should go up or down a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t think I should be allowed to order it. But I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”
Trump declined to answer a question about whether he’s spoken with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since leaving office.
“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his new book “War” that Trump and Putin have spoken at least seven times and that Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic, which the Kremlin later confirmed, according to severalnewsreports.
Trump said the presidential race will likely come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan and possibly Arizona.
The Economic Club of Chicago has also invited Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for a sit-down interview.
Trump Goes Full Dictator With Threat to Turn Military on U.S. Citizens
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – October 14, 2024
With less than 30 days on the clock, Donald Trump’s full attention is geared toward Election Day. But the specifics of his vision are veering into dangerous territory.
Speaking with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, the Republican presidential nominee claimed that the real Election Day issue is the “enemy from within.”
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said, deflecting Bartiromo’s baseless suggestion that Chinese immigrants in the country—or rapists—would interfere in the outcome of the election. “Not even the people that have come in and destroying our country, by the way, totally destroying our country.
“We have some very bad people,” Trump continued. “We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the—and it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
It’s not the first time Trump—or his allies—have threatened military action in order to achieve their goals.
Last week, Steve Bannon’s temporary War Room substitute host Natalie Winters vowed that Trump’s postelection retribution tour will involve prosecuting his enemies for treason, including some members of his former administration, such as retired U.S. Army general and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley.
And Trump himself has leveraged the authoritarian rhetoric before, as well. Speaking with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro in September 2020, Trump warned that he would use force against Democrats if they chose to protest in the streets following his potential win on Election Day.
“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that, if we want,” Trump said at the time, according to Politico.
“Look, it’s called insurrection,” he continued. “We just send in, and we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes.”
Of course, Trump did not send in the military to rein in the insurrection—carried out by his own followers after he lost.
North Koreans fighting in Ukraine alongside Russians, Zelensky says
Brad Dress – October 14, 2024
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that North Korean troops are now fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, appearing to confirm reports that have been circulating in recent weeks.
Zelensky, in a video address, said there was an “increasing alliance” between Russia and North Korea, which are already cooperating on arms and technology.
“This is no longer just about transferring weapons,” Zelensky said. “It is actually about transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.”
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said at a parliamentary session last week that it was “highly likely” that North Korean troops were deployed into Ukraine, citing that it would be consistent with a defense treaty between Moscow and Pyongyang.
Local media in Ukraine also reported that a Ukrainian strike earlier this month killed North Korean officers in a strike in Russian-occupied Donetsk.
North Korea has been supplying Russia with critical artillery shells and ballistic missiles in return for access to aid and technology to boost nuclear and space programs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Pyongyang in June, when he and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced deepening ties and a mutual defense treaty that includes an obligation to come to each other’s defense in the event of a direct attack.
Russian forces are continuing to press forward across the front line of eastern Ukraine, primarily in the Donetsk region where they have made incremental progress while suffering high losses.
Zelensky said Sunday that Ukrainian defenders have shown “exceptional performance” in defending against Russian attacks, but the increasing ties between Russia and North Korea calls for stronger relations with Ukraine’s allies.
“The front line needs more support,” he said, making another plea for the ability to strike deep into Russia, a policy the U.S. has refrained from lifting out of concern of escalation.
As Vance targets Planned Parenthood, Trump hedges on abortion ban
Steve Benen – October 14, 2024
A surgical room at Whole Woman’s Health of Austin abortion clinic, one of Texas’ few abortion clinics.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways
At the recent vice presidential debate, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio argued that when it comes to abortion rights, he and his party have to “do a better job at winning back people’s trust.” When the senator sat down last week with The New York Times, he used nearly identical phrasing, prompting a worthwhile follow-up question.
“What does that mean, though?” the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked. After noting the frequency with which the GOP candidate uses the line, she went on to ask whether Vance was prepared to “moderate his position” on reproductive rights.
Days earlier, the Ohioan also told reporters that if Donald Trump returns to the White House, the Republican administration would defund Planned Parenthood.
On “Fox News Sunday,” host Shannon Bream asked Vance where Planned Parenthood patients would go for health services if the Trump White House ended federal support for the clinics. The Republican acknowledged that Planned Parenthood “does a lot of things that a lot of young women, a lot of young families need” — a striking admission, to be sure — but he never quite got around to answering the question.
Meanwhile, the senator’s running mate also appeared on Fox News over the weekend, and Trump commented on the same issue in provocative ways. The Hill reported:
Former President Trump said Sunday that a national abortion ban is “off the table,” but he left the door open on the conversation by saying “we’ll see what happens.”
“Let me just tell you, I think that it’s something that’s off the table now, because I did something that everybody has wanted to do, I was able to get it back to the states,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo, adding that overturning Roe v. Wade was something “every Democrat and Republican wanted.”
Trump’s efforts to rewrite recent history were, of course, utterly bonkers. The idea that “every Democrat” wanted Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe is the opposite of reality.
As part of the same comments, he added that “everybody” wanted Roe to be overturned, which we also know to be demonstrably false: Poll after poll after poll found that a majority of Americans — including plenty of GOP voters — opposed the Republican-appointed justices’ ruling in Dobbs.
But it was also of interest that when looking to the future, Trump added: “Now, we’ll see what happens.”
So, on the one hand, the Republican nominee believes the issue has been “defused.” On the other hand, the “we’ll see what happens” phrasing suggests Trump still believes the door is open to additional changes.
The result is ongoing uncertainty about an issue of great importance to many voters — doubts fueled by the former president’s frequent contradictions. Six months ago, for example, Trump said he was “looking at” possible restrictions on contraception, only to take a dramatically different position a day later.
Similarly, earlier this month, the GOP nominee said he’d veto a federal abortion ban if it came across his Oval Office desk. Now, his position is “We’ll see what happens.”
“Sen. Vance, I’m going to ask you again”: JD Vance repeatedly refuses to admit Trump lost in 2020.
The Recount – October 14, 2024
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance had many opportunities over the past two weeks to admit Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election — but he has not taken any of them.
“I’m just going to assume that if I ask you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?” ABC News’ Martha Raddatz said during a recent interview with the Ohio senator.
“Martha, you’ve asked this question. I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks,” Vance said. “Of course Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020. You haven’t asked about inflation.”
Since Vance’s Democratic opponent, Tim Walz, pressed him during their vice presidential debate October 1 on the issue, journalists have asked Vance to directly answer the question about the 2020 election. But Vance has repeatedly evaded, often pivoting to issues like inflation or censorship, or only saying the election had “problems.”
During one recent interview with The New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro, published Friday, Vance refused five times to answer.
“Senator, yes or no: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” Garcia-Navarro asked Vance.
“Let me ask you a question: Is it okay that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said, it cost Donald Trump millions of votes?” the VP nominee said.
Garcia-Navarro: “Sen. Vance, I’m going to ask you again: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
Vance: “I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.”
Garcia-Navarro: “I have asked this question repeatedly. It is something that is very important for the American people to know. There is no proof, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump — did not lose the 2020 election.”
Vance: “You’re repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I’m saying.”
JD Vance Awfully Quiet After Report on How His Mom Got Health Care
Hafiz Rashid – October 14, 2024
JD Vance credited Donald Trump for his family being able to get off of Medicaid and onto private health insurance, at the vice presidential debate earlier this month. But he isn’t telling the whole story: that it was due to Obamacare.
Vance’s mother was able to buy private insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, run by Ohio, after overcoming substance abuse, becoming financially stable, and earning too much to stay on Medicaid. At the debate, Vance was also referring to a cousin in Florida who got private insurance through the state marketplace, a campaign spokesperson told The Washington Post.
Vance said that Trump fixed a lot of issues with the ACA after Republicans failed to repeal the bill early in his presidency. But this belies the fact that Vance’s family members reaped the benefits of the ACA despite Trump and the rest of the GOP repeatedly attempting to undermine, and then remove, it.
If Trump had been successful, the ACA and its marketplaces would not exist in their current form, if at all, said Andrew Sprung, an independent health analyst, to The Washington Post.
“If any Vance family members transitioned to the marketplace because they earned out of Medicaid, they should be grateful that Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to repeal and replace the marketplace with an alternative that would have provided far less affordable coverage,” Sprung said.
Vance’s current praise of Trump also goes against what he was saying in 2017, when the then president and Republicans in Congress were trying to repeal and replace the bill. Back then, Vance said that Republicans’ proposals would hurt low-income Americans.
“The ‘full repeal’ bill is nothing of the sort—it preserves the regulatory structure of Obamacare, but withdraws its supports for the poor,” Vance wrote in a column for The New York Times seven years ago.
Vance’s health care proposals, like Trump’s, essentially bring back health insurance companies’ ability to charge more for preexisting conditions. This would hurt the same low-income Americans Vance was supposedly concerned about in 2017, and stick older Americans with those conditions with a higher bill, and that could include Vance’s family members.
Trump’s interview with Maria Bartiromo was more like propaganda than news
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic – October 13, 2024
Donald Trump appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” and unleashed an endless stream of lies, threats and nonsense — you know, the usual.
And how did Bartiromo, once a respected business journalist, respond?
Mostly by doing nothing. She just let him go. She gave modest pushback every now and then, but sometimes she all but cheered him on.
This wasn’t journalism. It was more like propaganda.
And it’s not particularly surprising. Bartiromo has long been a far-right apologist. And Trump has long lied about almost everything. It’s just a little stunning to sit through a solid hour of it and realize the danger this kind of thing poses.
Trump began by saying there is ‘something wrong’ with Kamala Harris
Trump began the interview by saying this about his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris: “She can’t talk. There’s something wrong with the candidate.”
Silence from Bartiromo. The same silence that followed Trump saying of President Joe Biden, “He doesn’t have any idea what’s happening. In all fairness, he spends his day sleeping.”
Trump said he’s leading in every poll in every swing state. He’s not, but that’s typical political posturing. “I know you are leading in all these swing states,” Bartiromo said later. It’s one thing to let him say whatever he wants. Not a good thing, but a thing. It’s quite another to go along with his nonsense.
Former President Donald Trump smiles while delivering remarks on Sept. 12, 2024, at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Tucson.
And when you ask the presidential candidate for a major political party if he’s worried about violence from terrorists on Election Day and he says what he’s really worried about is “the enemy from within, people within,” who he defines as “radical-left lunatics,” and goes on to say, “They should be very easily handled, if necessary by the National Guard and, if really necessary, the military,” do you not want to know more? Doesn’t this warrant a follow-up question — at least?
Is Trump really saying he would turn the military on political enemies?
Is Trump really saying he would turn the U.S. military on people whose politics he disagrees with? Maybe he misspoke? Maybe he’s joking? Because no candidate could really mean that, right? By the way, if you’re wondering who those enemies are, Trump named Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in California.
Bartiromo just moved on. Pathetic, and dangerous. And yes, Trump certainly sounded like he meant it.
Bartiromo asked Trump about the lies he has spread about federal response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton after he talked repeatedly about “how badly they’ve done with North Carolina, parts of Georgia. A lot of governors have done a good job, but the response from the White House has been terrible, the response from her (Harris, presumably) has been terrible.”
In fact, even Republican governors have praised the federal response. Beyond just campaign mud-slinging, the worry is that the relentless false claims about FEMA aid for hurricane victims is that it will keep people from asking for the help they’re eligible for, and desperately need.
What about Trump’s lie (not her word) that President Biden took money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to use on migrants?
“No, no, it came out from there and everybody knew it and it was released from them, and all of a sudden a week later they have a different scenario,” Trump said.
Do you have proof? That’s one question that comes to mind. Too bad Bartiromo didn’t ask it.
Bartiromo did ask a couple of good questions. Though again, the follow-up was either approving nods or just nothing at all. She asked about Trump’s supposed 200% tariffs — this would increase the cost of goods, she pointed out. He said it wouldn’t, without giving any explanation, and she said, “It’s got to be passed on somehow.” At this point Trump basically said it was more of a theoretical number used as a threat.
And isn’t it dangerous to encourage Israel to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities? “No, you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
You can’t call this journalism. You can call it irresponsible
During the interview, the chyrons at the bottom of the screen offered nuggets like these: “Trump holds massive rallies on the campaign trail” and “Trump: We are running to save our country.”
There was more, but you get the idea. This was the safest of safe spaces. Harris has been criticized for appearing with entertainers like Howard Stern and Stephen Colbert, who obviously support her. (Stern endorsed her. Colbert drank a beer with her.)
But that’s just it — they’re entertainers. Bartiromo is a journalist. At least she used to be. After Sunday’s interview, it’s hard to think of her as anything but a Trump supporter, who brought him onto her show and let him campaign.
Granted, she knows her audience, who will lap this up, whatever “this” is. You can’t call it good journalism. You can call it irresponsible.
The ex-president gave a sit-down interview with Maria Bartiromo, one of the Fox News hosts whose role in pushing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election landed her bosses in the crosshairs of a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. It was later settled to the tune of $787m.
In the interview, which aired on Sunday, Bartiromo was back on typical form, suggesting that America was headed for possible violence on election day due to scores of immigrants supposedly being let in illegally by the Biden administration. That was a debunked conspiracy the Trump team floated in both 2016 and 2020 — that millions of votes for his opponents came from noncitizens.
But Trump took things a step further, denying Bartiromo’s suggestion that those groups would be the “real” problem on Election Day.
That honor, he said, went to the so-called “enemy within.”
“I don’t think [immigrants] are the problem in terms of election day,” Trump told Bartiromo. “I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics.”
At that point, he suggested a seemingly sinister solution.
Trump floats sending military after US citizens on election day (The Independent)
“And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military,” he said.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people who have come in, who are destroying our country.”
It isn’t clear under what circumstances Trump would view it justifiable to call in US troops against his own countrymen.
But his comments mark a baseless attack and a particularly hollow one coming from someone whose supporters violently attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to stop him from being thrown out of office three years ago.
It is perhaps unsurprising, though.
The ex-president, humiliated by his defeat in 2020, has taken to dehumanizing his opponents’ voters whenever possible. At a rally in Dayton, Ohio, in the spring he claimed that Democrats were “not people, in some cases” while onstage with Senate candidate Bernie Moreno.
Many political analysts have speculated that Trump is already laying the groundwork for efforts to contest the election results this year should be be defeated once again, by seeding conspiracies about non-citizens voting and mail-in ballots which he will possibly use in November and December to argue that the results are tainted.
But mail-in voting has not been proven to be signficantly tainted by fraud in any jurisidiction across the US.
Meanwhile, non-citizen voting is already illegal (despite Republican efforts to pass legislation against it in Congress) and does not occur due to existing state and local election systems having safeguards to prevent it. A 2016 analysis found that only 30 instances of non-citizens attempting to vote were reported in the 2016 election cycle across the whole of the US.
“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,” said Ian Sams, a Harris campaign spokesperson. “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. What Donald Trump is promising is dangerous, and returning him to office is simply a risk Americans cannot afford.”
Trump’s supporters violently besieged the US Capitol in January 2021, injuring dozens of police officers and forcing lawmakers as well as then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was a top target of their fury, to hide in secure locations around the Capitol complex for hours. Their aim was clear: to prevent a vote in the US Senate that would certify the election results from three months prior.
The attack failed, and Joe Biden was sworn in to office just a few weeks later. In the months and years since the riot, Republicans in Congress and around the country have attempted to misinform and misconstrue the reason and intent of the attack, as well as minimize the extent of the violence that day.
