Who does Trump see as his “enemies from within”?

TEMPE, Arizona. – Donald Trump allies tried in vain to persuade him at the end of the campaign to stop venting his fury on “the enemies from within.” But he doesn’t stop.

In his rallies and interviews, the former president has become increasingly focused on Americans he believes have wronged or betrayed him. They are worse, he argues, than the United States’ foreign adversaries. And he made it clear that he wanted it use the power the federal government, including the military, to follow them.

“These lunatics that we have – the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people we have that actually run the country,” Trump said this month at a rally in Wisconsin. “These people are more dangerous – the enemy from within – than Russia, China and other people.”

When he had the opportunity to hedge, he doubled his position.

Fox News’ Howard Kurtz told Trump in an interview last weekend that “enemies within” is “a pretty ominous term when you’re talking about other Americans.”

“I think that’s accurate,” Trump replied.

The Oval Office’s threat to address personal grievances so alarmed some former senior Trump advisers that they deemed him fascist. Vice President Kamala HarrisTrump’s democratic rival, agreed that Trump is described by an authoritarian, ultranationalist ideology.

“Either Donald Trump is going through his enemies list, or I, working for you, am going through my to-do list,” Harris said Thursday in Georgia.

Trump’s critics warn that the barriers that kept him in check – advisers and government officials who ignored potentially illegal orders or steered him away from problematic ideas – will not disappear in a second term.

Some Trump supporters believe his talk of revenge is either justified or excessive.

“We already know what kind of president he will be because he has served,” said Jennifer Warnke, 57, of St. Johns, Arizona, on Thursday before a Trump rally in the Phoenix area. Trump joke that he would be a dictator she stated that “just for the first day” was a joke intended to emphasize his commitment to border security.

Trump generally defines his enemies vaguely: the radical left, communists, the deep state, or simply “them.” But sometimes he calls them directly. Here’s a list of some of the Americans Trump has preyed on in recent weeks:

Adam Schiff

Trump’s conflict with Schiff, a Democratic congressman from Los Angeles and the overwhelming favorite in the race for California’s open Senate seat, dates back to his time in the White House.

As the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee during Trump’s presidency, Schiff was a fierce and ubiquitous critic of Trump’s contacts with foreign leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Schiff also served as the lead impeachment manager, calling on senators to remove Trump from office after he was first impeached by the House of Representatives.

“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yes, to me they are the enemy from within,” Trump said last weekend on Fox News. This month, he called Schiff a “scumbag” at a rally in California.

Schiff said the outbursts show the danger of a second Trump presidency.

“We’re seeing a lot of very erratic behavior, which would be fine if it was your crazy grandpa, crazy old grandpa, but this is a presidential candidate,” Schiff said on MSNBC.

Trump replaced competent advisers with “total sycophants,” Schiff said, and if Trump returns to power, “we will all have to do everything we can to defend our democracy and our institutions.”

Nancy Pelosi

The former House speaker led to Trump’s two impeachments and served as an obstacle to his congressional agenda during his presidency. She was a vocal critic, calling him a threat to democracy, and once dramatically tore up the text of his State of the Union speech after sitting behind him during the speech.

“I think Nancy Pelosi is the enemy from within,” Trump said in an interview on Fox. “She lied. She was supposed to protect the Capitol.

He repeated the debunked claim that Pelosi he refused to help National Guard troops to protect the Capitol January 6, 2021when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in an attempt to prevent the certification of his 2020 election defeat.

“60 Minutes” CBS

Journalists have been targeted by Trump since his first campaign, when he called the mainstream media “fake news.”

Most recently, his ire has been directed specifically at CBS’s “60 Minutes,” the highest-rated news program on CBS.

Facing criticism for refusing to be interviewed for a campaign special earlier this month, Trump blasted CBS for editing Harris’ response to a question about Israel. Another CBS show, “Face the Nation,” aired a different part of her answer to the same question.

Redaction is a common journalistic practice. Trump participates in the interviews, which are also edited.

But he spent weeks attacking the network at his rallies and on his social media platform, threatening to strip CBS of its broadcast license over what he called “the biggest scandal in television history.”

At a rally in Arizona on Thursday, Trump repeated an attack on the media from his 2016 campaign that shocked the political establishment at the time but has not been a regular feature of his more recent rhetoric.

“They are the enemy of the people. They are,” Trump told the jeering crowd. “I was asked not to say that. I don’t want to say it. I hope that one day they will not be enemies of the people.”