Harris uses Trump’s ‘enemy from within’ comment to portray GOP rival as dangerous and unstable

By Priscilla Alvarez and Eric Bradner, CNN

Erie, Pennsylvania (CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Republican rival Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Monday night over the former president’s comment that the US military should handle “the enemy from within” on Election Day.

It was the latest example of Harris’ campaign drawing sharper distinctions with Trump in the presidential race’s closing weeks, using the former president’s own words and those of his former aides to cast him as dangerous and unstable.

In Erie on Monday, Harris highlighted Trump’s comments Sunday on Fox News, when he said he isn’t worried about his supporters’ actions on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” he said.

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.

Harris on Monday warned that Trump’s actions could put people’s freedom at risk.

“You heard his words, coming from him. He’s talking about the enemy within … he’s talking about that he considers anyone that doesn’t support him, or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of our country,” Harris said.

She said later, “He’s saying he would use the military to go after them … and we know who he would target, because he has attacked them before: Journalists whose stories who he doesn’t like, election officials who refuse to cheat by finding extra votes for him, judges who insist on following the law instead of bending to his will. This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous.”

Harris’ campaign will also release a new ad, dubbed “Enemy Within,” which features Trump repeatedly invoking the phrase “the enemy from within” on the campaign trail.

The 30-second spot includes two former Trump aides, Olivia Troye, who served as an aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, and Kevin Carroll, a former Trump Homeland Security official.

“I do remember the day that he suggested that we shoot people on the streets,” Troye says in the ad.

“The second term would be worse,” Carroll says in the ad. “There will be no one to stop his worst instincts. Unchecked power. No guardrails. We elect Trump again, we’re in terrible danger.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ vice presidential pick, told hundreds of supporters at a convention center in Green Bay, Wisconsin that Trump’s suggestion at using the National Guard or the US military to respond to political opposition to him “makes me sick to my stomach” and referred to Trump as “a fascist to his core.”

“As someone who wore this nation’s uniform proudly, as someone who now is the commander In chief of the Minnesota National Guard, the idea of sending US military personnel against American citizens makes me sick to my stomach,” Walz said. “We’ll let the lawyers decide if what he said was treason. But what I know is, it’s a call for violence, plain and simple, and it’s pretty damn un-American, if you ask me.”

Walz’s vice presidential candidate counterpart, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, attempted to defend Trump’s remarks.

“Is it a justifiable use of those assets if they’re rioting and looting and burning cities down to the ground? Of course it is. Right? I think the question is, is it a justifiable use of assets, depends on what’s actually happening,” Vance told reporters in Minneapolis.

Vance also claimed there were “a core group of far-left activists” who were willing to harass and commit violence against fellow Americans in 2016 and after the death of George Floyd in 2020.

Vance said “one of the ways” he interprets the “enemy within” comment is unvetted undocumented immigrants inside the country due to the Biden administration’s border polices, while Trump suggested people within the country pose a bigger threat.

“In the past three-and-a-half years, Kamala Harris’ open border has allowed at least hundreds and maybe thousands of people that we know are on the terrorism watch list thanks to her Special Immigrant Visa Program in the wake of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal,” Vance said. “The enemy within are people that Kamala Harris let into this country, unvetted, unchecked and undocumented.”

During her event Monday, Harris also plans to show attendees in Erie what Trump rallies are like, the aide said.

She has previously urged voters to watch Trump rallies – an unusual move for a candidate, and one that underscores the Harris campaign’s belief that an unfiltered Trump is damaging to his own prospects.

“You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” Harris said in her debate with Trump last month.

Her campaign in recent days has featured Republicans, including former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, highlighting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Last week she launched an ad in North Carolina that included highlights from a recent campaign event with Cheney.

“Former generals, secretaries of defense, secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, CIA directors, and National Security Council leaders under Democratic and Republican presidents, Republican members of Congress and even former Trump administration officials agree: There’s only one candidate fit to lead our nation and that’s Kamala Harris,” a narrator said in that spot.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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