Former President Donald Trump called Democrats and others who have opposed or investigated him “the enemy from within” in an interview that aired Sunday, describing them as more dangerous than major foreign adversaries of the United States, including Russia and China.
Trump specifically singled out those whom he called “lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff,” referring to the California representative and Democratic nominee for Senate, who was the lead prosecutor in the then-president’s first Senate impeachment trial.
During a pretaped interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Trump was asked by host Maria Bartiromo about how he would handle bureaucrats who might seek to undermine him in a potential second term.
“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.”
Trump added that a “smart president” could handle outside adversaries “pretty easily,” but “the thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff.”
“I call him the enemy from within,” he added.
As the 2024 presidential race enters the final weeks, the Republican nominee has increasingly labeled those opposed to him, including Vice President Kamala Harris, as criminals, and speech critical of him or his policies as illegal — a rhetorical focus of his in past races as well.
Trump’s comments on Sunday echoed remarks he made at a rally in Coachella, California, on Saturday evening, where he called Schiff “shifty Schiff” and “the enemy from within.”
“He conceived of the Russia hoax. … He’s a sick person,” Trump said.
In response to a request for comment from NBC News on Sunday, Schiff’s campaign pointed to a series of tweets the Democratic congressman posted Saturday night in response to Trump’s rally remarks.
“Yet another nonsensical rant about me filled with tired insults, lies about voting booths, and more, this time in my home state of California. Seriously, Donald. Why are you so obsessed with me?” Schiff wrote.
The former president has long had an adversarial relationship with Schiff going back to the congressman’s work as one of the impeachment managers in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. In posts on Truth Social, Trump has often referred to the congressman as “shifty” and alleged that he improperly investigated Trump’s ties to Russia during the impeachment inquiry.
House Republicans have joined Trump in his ire against Schiff, who is leading in the California Senate race against former baseball player Steve Garvey, a Republican.
In 2023, House Republicans censured Schiff on the House floor, alleging that he misrepresented special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. Mueller’s report found no explicitly coordinated effort between Trump’s campaign and Russia to influence the election.
“You look at the danger he put our country in, potentially with Russia, with the phony, made-up deal that he made up with Hillary and some bad people … that started off as an excuse for why she lost an election that a lot of people thought she should have won,” Trump added on Sunday.
When asked about the upcoming election, Trump tried to tamp down fears — as expressed by President Joe Biden earlier this month — that chaos could again ensue like it did in 2020.
“No I don’t think so, not from the side that votes for Trump,” the former president said, adding that any issues around the election wouldn’t be because of outside agitators or foreign nations.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within … We have some very bad people we have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” he said.
Any unrest, Trump said, “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
The National Guard were famously delayed for hours in responding to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, in part because Trump did not request that they be deployed on the day of the riot.
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
