Trump Escalates Threats to Political Opponents He Deems the ‘Enemy’

With three weeks left before Election Day, former President Donald J. Trump is pushing to the forefront of his campaign a menacing political threat: that he is going to use the presidency to punish anyone who opposes him.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Trump demonised the Democrats as “an enemy within” that would commit mayhem on November 3 that he expected the National Guard to quell.

The next day, he ended a speech to a purported audience in Pennsylvania with a clear warning about his political rivals.

“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done they’ve taken it they have weaponised, weaponised our elections. They’ve done things that iota or fragmentariness could have deemed possible.

And on Tuesday, he once again failed to guarantee that he would peacefully step out of the office when again cornered with the question by an interlocutor at an economic forum in Chicago.

As early voting gets underway in crucial states, the campaign to the White House is moving towards November 3 in an unusual and ominous way. Mr. Trump has always had a somewhat fond fascination with at least somewhat authoritarian stances despite having never directly threatened democracy, but since the 2020 elections, he has actively refused to concede, peddled conspiracy theories regarding widespread electoral fraud and accused the justice system of being weaponized against him. He has congratulated leaders such as Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for embodying authoritarianism.

But never before has a presidential nominee — let alone a former president — openly suggested using the military against American citizens, because they do not support him as a candidate. The more he threatens poll voters with political reprisals, Mr. Trump is presenting voters with another form of the American polity, one that is considerably less democratic.

“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,” said Ian Bassin, former associate White House counsel and leader at Protect Democracy. ‘It is so patently, deliberately, obviously outside of the norms of how this country has operated, that it’s hard to describe just how crazy this is.’

With just over two months left in their campaigns, Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are focusing most of their efforts on arguing about the remaining four topics prioritized by voters, namely the economy, women’s reproductive rights, affordable housing, and America’s involvement in ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle Eastern countries. The contest is still close, and attitudes toward Mr. Trump are highly polarized for most registered voters.

But the Harris campaign believes there are new political openings in Mr. Trump’s newest assaults on democracy most especially with the Republican moderates and Independents who do not approve of the former president’s character and highly polarizing approach.

When Mr. Trump spoke on Monday evening, Ms. Harris delivered a speech at a stadium in Pennsylvania where, in an uncharacteristic gesture of defiance, she played a video montage of Mr. Trump threatening those who cross him. It also entailed his recent utterances on the probability of an attack on the “internal foe.”

“He means anyone who is not in his corner, who will not give him money or do as he demands is an enemy of our nation,” Mrs Clinton said at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania to thousands of people. “He is saying that he would use the military to get at them.”

Ms. Harris has specifically embarked on intense criticism of Mr. Trump which is unusual given that she had been seeking to downplay his presidency as but a part of the past. Her aides think that voters still remain ignorant of the messages of Mr. Trump, much less, comprehend what is at risk for their democracy.

The down and dirty campaign intends to use the video of Mr. Trump’s remarks — which was immediately edited into a raw TV commercial — into further rallies, which are very much part of the formula. Ms. Mr. Harris said to her aids after Monday night’s event that it was like presenting her evidence against him, Mr. Trump from the video footage.

Some of the people who have publicly called for Mr. Trump and his administration to stop are readying themselves for him to fulfill his campaigns’ pledges. Gen. General Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Mr.Trump, told the journalist Bob Woodward that he thought that he would be possibly be recalled to active duty to face a court martial for being disloyal if Mr.Trump was re-elected. In a sharp retirement speech targeting Mr. Trump, General Milley described to Mr. Woodward how he fitted his home with bullet-proof glass and blast curtains.

Troye Olivia who worked as Vice President Mike Pence’s homeland security adviser before becoming one of the key Harris’s campaigners made the revelation in an interview citing her worries that in a second Trump’s term people could be prosecuted and her family endangered.

She feared her husband could lose his source of income, and that, Mr. Trump could pardon the insurrectionists and they could harm her. In a case, she even delayed taking in foster children because she feels the environment for her family is unsafe.

“I have of course thought about what I do have in other places when it comes to citizenship,” she responded. The spokesman of the government stated: “We are preparing for the worst.”

Such threats of vengeance from Mr. Trump are hardly new: He has been threatening to punish his political opponents since his campaign in 2016 and in theatorial debates he went on to insist that his opponent, Hillary Clinton deserved to be jailed and urged his supporters to chant “lock her up. After losing the election in 2020, he has not accepted his loss and up to now, he has been making false allegations of fraud.

And he has interlaced threats of revenge throughout his third and final sweep of the country and the then upcoming presidential elections, by vowing to punish those he believed had wronged his electorate.

“It was the year 2016 when I said, ‘I am the voice of the millions,’’ Mr. Trump told a group of activists during a Conservative Political Action Committee annual meeting in March 2023. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those whom you betrayed and were offended, their revenge is me.”

He moderated his language for some time but when he triumphed over the Iowa caucuses it was a landslide victory. However, he was able to quickly dust off threats of the infamous revenge prosecutions and other retributory actions once he was convicted of 34 felony counts by a New York jury in the last week of May , stating that “sometimes revenge is justified.” In June, he took another tack: For Kundera this translated in:: “My retribution will be success.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers would prefer that he stayed on the economy and immigration in particular, because they hope that these issues alone will sway undecided voters who may not want to associate with ominous message of Mr. Trump.

Nevertheless, whether during the policy speeches or in the town hall hall where voters expect to hear him address their concerns about their wallet or safety, Mr. Trump finds his way of reverting back to the issues that have characterized his campaign all year.

On the campaign trail, he has sought to turn Democrats’ gatherers on their head, decrying candidate Biden as anti-democratic and then claiming Ms. Harris stage-managed a “coup” when she was put forward to replace him on the ticket. On Monday during his town hall, Trump whose incendiary claims about the election fraud contributed to the storming of the Capitol on January 6th to prevent the peaceful transfer of power accused Mr. Biden of overthrowing an American president.

Trump either incited or knowingly encouraged the Jan. 6 riot, passing it off as only a minor protest by a group of his supporters.

“You didn’t have a single person hurt,” Mr. Trump told his interviewer, highlighting the January 20 th, on which, he said, “I left the morning that I was supposed to leave” as an example of a very peaceful transfer.

More to my interesting, most of the business and civilians leader the 1000 in the ballroom for Chicago Appreciation lauded. And there are symptoms that voters and even some Titans of the political ordered do not buy into believing that Mr. Trump will implement his worst vengeful utterances.

The CNN host Jake Tapper asked Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Republican of Virginia, about it on Monday; he insisted that the former president meant ‘enemy within’ as in ‘undocumented immigrants’.

When asked about Mr. Trump’s comment regarding using military against fellow Americans, Mr. Youngkin said he thought the president was not making such proposal. The network, he said, had “distorted my ideas in a very wrong way.”

“I’m not making this up, I’m literally reading his quotes to you,” Mr. Tapper this is what the man said.