Running mate J.D. Vance defends Trump’s ‘enemy from within’ comments

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance defended former President Donald Trump on Sunday, saying his running mate’s “enemy within” comment was about “far-left lunatics,” not leaders of the Democratic Party.

CNN “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper asked Mr. Vance about Mr. Trump’s comments on using the military against the “enemy from within” or people who disagree with him, like former House speaker Nancy Pelosi or Rep. Adam B. Schiff, both California Democrats.

Mr. Vance argued that Mr. Trump never said he would use the military against “Americans, writ large.”

“He said that he wanted to use the military to go after far-left lunatics who were rioting. And he also called them –- he also called them ’the enemy within,’” the Ohio senator said. “He, separately, in a totally different context and a totally different context, in a totally conversation, said that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff were threats to this country.”

Mr. Trump said in an interview earlier this month with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that the National Guard or military could be used to combat the “enemy from within,” which included “radical left lunatics.”

He has repeated that comment and mentioned Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schiff as examples of the “enemy.”

“These people — they’re so sick, and they’re so evil. If they would spend their time trying to make America great again, it would be so easy to make this country great,” Mr. Trump said in a town hall with Fox News’ Harris Faulker that aired this month. “I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Vance said people like Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schiff “pose a greater threat to the United States’ peace and security.”

“What he said, and I do agree with this — what he said is that the biggest threat we have in our country, it’s not a foreign adversary, because we can handle these guys. We can handle foreign conflicts,” Mr. Vance told NBC host Kristen Welker.

“We can’t handle — look, under Nancy Pelosi’s long life in public leadership, the United States has gone from the preeminent industrial power of the world to second, next to China,” Mr. Vance said. “That fundamentally belongs on Nancy Pelosi’s shoulders, and if we’re going to have a more prosperous country, we’ve got to recognize our own leadership is why we lost our industrial base to China. Our own leadership is failing to lead this country into peace and prosperity.”