Vance defends Trump’s ‘enemy within’ comments

As a former president Donald Trump repeated his “enemy within” line on the campaign trail, referring to political opponents, his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), came to his defense, saying the “broken” leadership in the United States was worse than any foreign enemy of the country.

Speaking on NBC Meet the pressVance was asked does he believe that the political opponents Trump mentioned in his comments, particularly the House member, Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Honorary Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), are “more dangerous” than foreign adversaries such as Russia and China.

“Well, I think what Donald Trump said is that these people pose a great threat to the peace and security of the United States because America is strong enough to withstand any foreign adversary,” Vance said before being asked if he believed that some political opponents “pose a much greater threat” than Russia and China.

“What he said – and I agree with this – he said the biggest threat we have in our country is not a foreign adversary, because we can handle these guys. … Look, during Nancy Pelosi’s long life as a leader, the United States has gone from the preeminent industrial power in the world to the second only to China. Essentially, it rests on Nancy Pelosi’s shoulders. And if we want our country to become more prosperous, we must recognize that it was our own leadership that caused us to lose our industrial base to China. Our own leadership is incapable of leading this country to peace and prosperity,” Vance said.

Trump faced criticism after using the phrase in a Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo earlier this month.

In that interview he said“We have an external enemy, and we also have an enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

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He also said that “it should be very easy to handle, if necessary, by the National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

Trump also recently statedwithout any evidence that the “enemy within” released highly classified US intelligence documents concerning Israel. The FBI is investigating this incident.