Trump's "enemy from within" controversy.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Tomorrow.

Election fraud remains a salient concern for many voters headed into Election Day, and many of the claims that dominated in 2020 are resurfacing this year. I’ve spent countless hours tracking, investigating and explaining these claims since 2020; and in tomorrow’s Friday edition, I’m tackling some of the most serious allegations and sharing my 10 rules for assessing election fraud claims in 2024. 

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Quick hits.

1. Boeing factory workers rejected a deal that would have ended their five-week strike. (The vote)
2. Hezbollah confirmed that Hashem Safieddine, a high-ranking member of the militant group, was killed by an Israeli airstrike earlier this month. Safieddine was seen as a likely successor to Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September. (The announcement)
3. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes in September fell 1% from August, the second straight monthly decline and the slowest annual sales pace since October 2010. (The numbers)
4. New applications for US unemployment benefits fell for a second straight week, with significant declines in states impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. (The data)
5. The office of Georgia's secretary of state said it was targeted in a cyberattack intended to paralyze the battleground state's absentee voter website. The office said the attack likely came from outside the U.S. (The attack)

Today's topic.

Donald Trump’s recent comments, and the response to them. In the past two weeks, former President Donald Trump has made repeated references to “the enemy within” the United States, suggesting he would use the military to put down unrest caused by the left, sparking controversy as the presidential race nears its conclusion. Those remarks, in turn, have prompted former high-level members of his administration to speak out against his candidacy and question his fitness for office. 

On October 13, Trump called “the enemy from within” the United States more dangerous than China and Russia in an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo. The former president singled out Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) as one such “enemy,” suggesting Schiff’s claims that Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia put the U.S. in danger. When asked about the possibility of violence after the election, Trump said he did not think his supporters would cause any unrest but added, “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.” 

During a town hall hosted by Fox News on October 16, Trump repeated the claim that some Democratic leaders represented an “enemy from within,” saying that a “smart president” can handle foreign adversaries but politicians like Schiff and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stand in the way of progress and represent a more significant threat to U.S. democracy. On Sunday, Trump defended the remarks in an interview with Fox News’s Howard Kurtz, calling Schiff and Pelosi enemies. 

In response to those comments, Vice President Kamala Harris sharply criticized Trump in campaign speeches and interviews, alleging he would use his power as president to target political opponents, including “journalists whose stories 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.” Conversely, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), said it was “preposterous” to suggest Trump would use the military against political foes, while Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung repeated Trump’s message, saying, “Those who seek to undermine democracy by sowing chaos in our elections are a direct threat” to the country. 

On Tuesday, The New York Times published a rebuke of Trump’s comments by John Kelly, a former Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. Kelly stated that Trump met the definition of a fascist and weighed personal loyalty above loyalty to the Constitution. Kelly also reiterated prior claims that he heard Trump call service members who were wounded, captured, or killed in action “losers and suckers,” which Trump and other aides have denied. 

Kelly is the latest in a series of senior military leaders who worked with Trump to criticize the former president. Journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book that Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Trump “the most dangerous person to this country… A fascist to the core,” an assessment that was echoed by Gen. Jim Mattis, who served as Trump’s defense secretary. 

On Tuesday, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg shared additional comments from Kelly about his time with Trump. Kelly said that Trump had asked him, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” when complaining about disloyalty in the administration. Goldberg also reported that Trump privately expressed frustration about covering the funeral costs for Vanessa Guillén, an Army private who was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in 2020. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican,” Trump reportedly said, according to unnamed attendees and contemporaneous notes of the meeting. Trump spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer strongly denied the allegation, and Mayra Guillén, Vanessa’s sister, released a statement saying, “I am beyond grateful for all the support President Donald Trump showed our family during a trying time.”

Today, we’ll share perspectives from the left and right about Trump’s recent comments and the criticisms from former administration figures. Then, my take. 

What the left is saying.

• The left is appalled by Trump’s recent comments, arguing they should worry all Americans. 
• Some note that Trump and his supporters use the same tactics to deflect every negative story about him. 
• Others say it would be a mistake not to take Trump’s comments seriously. 

In MSNBC, Frank Figliuzzi suggested “a military that quashes protest is a part of Donald Trump's fascistic dream.”

“Trump could have said he hoped the election would be peaceful. He could have used that moment in the interview on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ to call for peace no matter the outcome. He could have even said he has no idea what far-left protesters might do if he wins or what his MAGA base would do if he loses. Instead, Trump chose to express a fascistic desire to use the military against his dissenters,” Figliuzzi wrote. “His authoritarian fantasy of the military handling political dissent and his political adversaries is still a revelation of what could be in store for our country if he ever again becomes commander in chief.”

“If you think I’m being too dramatic or alarmist, I implore you to study how a society slowly slips into fascism. The three recognized pillars of fascism are demonization of domestic enemies, preposterous lies and contempt for domestic institutions — especially elections and the rule of law. Importantly, those pillars, all present in the Trump MAGA movement, have historically been bound by an affinity for military values, as reflected in Trump’s vision for our troops.”

In The Washington Post, Philip Bump wrote “past Trump advisers say he’s fascist. Trump says he’s not. Whom to trust?”

“One of Donald Trump’s most effective and most useful tactics in rebuffing criticism has been to insist that any critic is operating in bad faith. There are no valid complaints about Trump, he insists, and there are no reliable complainers. Saying something critical of the former president means that you are not loyal to the former president and therefore that your criticism is tainted by your anti-Trump bias,” Bump said. “It works. People who are supportive of Trump are almost definitionally inclined to grant him the benefit of the doubt, meaning that they are predisposed to assume that he’s the one approaching a point of debate from a more defensible position.”

“Put those things together and we get where we are today. A phalanx of former Trump advisers and appointees has delineated the ways in which he embraces fascism, hopes to implement authoritarianism, disparaged the military and offered praise for Adolf Hitler — and the most likely reaction from Trump’s supporters will be that they are just anti-Trump haters,” Bump wrote. “In fact, questions about Trump’s embrace of authoritarianism have been reframed by Trump and his supporters as the real danger. In the wake of the July attempt on Trump’s life in Pennsylvania, he and his allies argued that the shooting was a function of commentary that suggested Trump was a threat to democracy… The real threat to democracy, Trumpworld insists, is saying that the Republican nominee for president poses a threat to democracy.”

In The Los Angeles Times, Jackie Calmes said “Trump promises mayhem. Take him seriously and literally.”

“Trump is outdoing himself during the 2024 campaign’s final weeks, belching threats and spreading conspiracies. He demonstrated as president what he’s capable of, not least in separating migrant families and inciting an insurrection. Dozens of former advisors have told us that he’d have committed other dangerous, even illegal acts — including ordering troops into the streets, authorized to shoot protesters in the legs — but for the aides’ resistance,” Calmes wrote. “Such resistance likely will not come from sycophants a reelected Trump would appoint.”

“Which makes his comments on Sunday on Fox News about militarily countering ‘the enemy from within’ — that is, Democrats — all the more chilling. Trump told interviewer Maria Bartiromo that he isn’t worried about election day chaos from his supporters or foreigners but from ‘radical left lunatics,’” Calmes said. “Willful delusion about what Trump has done and what he could do if reelected — as he keeps promising, loud and proud — is idiocy in 2024.”

What the right is saying.

• The right mostly views the recent reports about Trump as a smear campaign typical of the mainstream media. 
• Some say claims that Trump threatens democracy aren’t resonating with voters. 
• Others warn Trump’s comments are a gift to Harris. 

In The Washington Examiner, David Harsanyi said “The Atlantic’s newest hit piece on Trump is why we can’t trust media.”

“The first thing to remember is that Goldberg could literally make up any quote from an alleged ‘anonymous’ source, and he would face no repercussions. No major outlet will challenge the veracity of his shoddy work, which breaks numerous journalistic norms, because his accusations are aimed at the right target,” Harsanyi wrote. “Goldberg’s 2024 narrative is suffering from the same problems his 2020 ‘suckers and losers’ hit piece did. Anonymous sources make claims that a bunch of on-the-record people contradict.”

“We have two anonymous sources telling us that Trump refused to pay for the funeral of a murdered Army private. By now, one hopes most people understand how the game works. Goldberg published a non-falsifiable October surprise. Other outlets, unlikely to run wholly uncorroborated claims themselves, can spread the smear without verification. They did this to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They’re going to keep doing it.”

In The New York Post, Jonathan Turley argued “voters aren’t buying that Trump is a ‘threat to democracy.’”

“I have long criticized the apocalyptic, democracy-ending predictions of Biden, Harris and others as ignoring the safeguards in our system against authoritarian power. Nevertheless, Harris supporters have ratcheted up the rhetoric to a level of pure hysteria,” Turley wrote. “There is, however, some good news in all of this: Despite years of alarmist predictions from Biden, Harris, the press, and pundits, the public is not buying it. It is not because they particularly like Trump. Many of his supporters seem poised to vote for him despite viewing him as polarizing and, at times, obnoxious.

“No, it is because the American voter has a certain innate resistance to being played as a chump. Many of the same figures claiming that democracy is at stake supported ballot cleansing to remove Trump and others from the ballots. They supported the weaponization of the legal process in New York against Trump,” Turley said. “Harris’ claim to be the only hope for democracy is proving as tin-eared as running on pure ‘joy.’ Voters are clearly demanding more than a political pitch of abject fear mixed with absolute joy.”

In National Review, Noah Rothman wrote “Trump gives the Harris campaign what it needs.”

“Trump’s remarks are a godsend to the Harris campaign at a time when it needs all the help it can get. The vice president’s campaign and its allies are doing all they can to publicize Trump’s remarks, but it is unlikely that Republicans have been privy to that rhetoric,” Rothman said. “The Right long ago learned to compartmentalize the former president’s imperious pronouncements. He, unlike his predecessors or would-be successors in the Oval Office, cannot be taken at his word, some argue. Rather, his comments should be subjected to exegesis by a priestly caste who can divine from them their most banal interpretation. This, we’re so often told, is the only intellectually serious way to interpret Trump’s guttural utterances. 

“That is irrational nonsense. More importantly, it’s nonsense to which the voters that matter in a general election do not subscribe. Republicans often let events fomented by Trump’s shorthand illiberalism get away from them by simply ignoring their significance. The result is a runaway news cycle in which Republicans play no part in shaping public perception. That’s not just bad practice, it’s an abdication of elementary civic duty.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• I put controversies over Trump’s statements into four categories, and they aren’t all equal.
• A lot of the concerns are overwrought, and Trump has long said things that would bury any other politician.
• Still, I think the concerns over his recent line about using the military against political opponents are reasonable.

There are several layers to these stories about Trump, so I want to start by taking a step back.

I like to categorize these Trump stories into a few different buckets: 1) Things Trump says publicly that all of us can see and hear with our own eyes and ears and judge accordingly, 2) things Trump says publicly that are then distorted or deceitfully edited by political opponents and the press to make him look bad, 3) things people publicly claim Trump has said, and 4) anonymously reported stories leveling allegations about things Trump said.

In the last few weeks, we've gotten stories in each of these buckets that concern me to varying degrees. Let’s start with Trump talking about the "threat from within" our country, which he described as "the radical left," saying he’d consider using the military against the inevitable protestors of his election victory. Trump then (kind of) walked those words back in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, but he appropriately took heat for them. This is bucket #1: alarming things Trump says publicly that all of us can see and hear with our own eyes and ears.

Trump’s "bloodbath" comments typify another kind of story. Here, Trump took flak for promising a “bloodbath” if he isn’t elected president; in context, however, he was very obviously talking about an economic bloodbath for the auto industry. But news outlets and the Harris campaign have since told voters Trump was promising political violence. This is bucket #2: things Trump says publicly that are then distorted or deceitfully edited by political opponents and the press to make him look bad.

Then there are the numerous stories like the ones John Kelly has told the press. Kelly was Trump's longest-serving chief of staff and a decorated former U.S. Marine. He has repeatedly spoken about alarming exchanges he had with Trump, and has done us the courtesy of putting his name to those claims. For instance, he recently shared a story about Trump wishing his generals were more like German generals during the Nazi era, since they were "totally loyal" to Hitler (not for nothing, but Hitler's generals quite famously tried to kill him repeatedly). Kelly also claimed that Trump told him “Hitler did some good things.” This is bucket #3: Claims made publicly about what Trump has said.

Last are stories like the one published in the same article in The Atlantic where Kelly went on the record. In this story, a group of anonymous sources claim that Trump reneged on a promise to pay for the funeral of a Mexican-American soldier who was killed, saying "It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!" Several people who were in the room deny he ever said that, and the soldier's sister denied he reneged on his promise or ever treated her or her family disrespectfully. This is bucket #4: anonymously reported stories leveling allegations about things Trump said.

The things I really take seriously are in bucket #1, what I see and hear Trump say publicly.  Bucket #2 both infuriates and motivates me, but for different reasons. It infuriates me because people who view me as part of "the media" will trust my work less when other members of the media mislead them in such obviously insidious ways; but it motivates me because I'm building an independent media organization that can benefit from the mainstream media's failures.

Bucket #3 very much depends on the context. I’m pretty much aligned with conservative writer Noah Rothman, who said on X, "I am genuinely vexed as to why Kelly – sterling service record in uniform and a loyal soldier for Trump, who only stepped on one PR rake as I recall in his time as DHS sec, and whose credibility is tied to people who backed him like Tom Cotton – deserves less benefit of the doubt in a he said/she said than Donald Trump. I would love to hear a sincere, non-hysterical case for why we should disregard his word and the stakes to which he is committing by retailing this accusation and take Trump and his defenders’ word as gospel.”

Like Rothman, if I were a betting man, I’d take Kelly’s version of events over Trump’s; but it's still ultimately a debate based solely on hearsay.

And I mostly ignore bucket #4. Anonymously sourced stories are important and often credible, depending on the context. In instances of national security, there are usually good reasons for people to go off-the-record. I've had sources go off-the-record. I know how it works. In articles where anonymous quotes support actual hard evidence (like leaked documents), one can usually trust that the source has a good reason to be guarded about their identity. But when anonymous stories about an offensive thing someone like Trump said are the story, I just have a hard time taking it seriously.

When it comes to coverage of Trump’s statements, I have a lot of conflicting feelings. Trump has always said or signaled a lot of very frightening things — things that used to be disqualifying for politicians or presidential candidates — but somehow he has survived politically. Anne Applebaum summed up a few from this election cycle neatly:

Trump blurs the distinction between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants—the latter including his wife, his late ex-wife, the in-laws of his running mate, and many others. He has said of immigrants, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.” He has claimed that many have “bad genes.” He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.” He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.” Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

Yet Applebaum — or her editors — opens herself up to criticism: Her article, in this case, was headlined "Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini." To say that comparisons to the bloodiest authoritarians of 20th-century Europe are a bit overwrought is — perhaps — an understatement. Like those leaders, Trump has used dehumanizing language to describe his fellow countrymen. But Hitler did that before rounding up and killing millions of Jews, and Stalin used that language while (literally) killing hundreds of thousands of his political opponents.

We know Trump. He was president for four years, and he didn't jail his political opponents. He didn't unleash the military on civilians. He didn't even radically crack down on immigrants. For all his bluster and tough talk, he deported fewer immigrants than Barack Obama did, and never even completed the much-promised border wall. He mostly built a paper wall that reduced legal immigration, while deterring migrants from the border with promises of ugly conditions if they ever made it here.

Might he take things to a new extreme in a second term? Yes, he might. Is his language throughout this campaign doing anything to dissuade his critics of notions he is a fascist dictator? No, it's not. And the things he says have downstream effects. For instance, 1 in 3 Americans now think that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America, including 61% of Republicans. That’s a troubling turn of opinion, particularly as leaders beyond Trump adopt this kind of messaging. But Trump isn't going to be the 21st century's Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini. More likely than not he’ll be a very similar president as he was the first time around. Some Americans pine for that; others fear it deeply. But none of us are going to live through World War II Germany. 

Of course, all of this highlights what are and remain Trump's two biggest liabilities: First, it is his own words and actions that often invite the harshest criticisms of him as a person and candidate. And second, a lot of people in the media (and his own inner circle!) really hate him. That means that whenever he says something stupid, scary or sordid behind closed doors, it’s almost a guarantee that we’ll all hear about it.

One of the largest strikes on Trump, as a candidate, is that so many of the people who have worked with him closely and seen him out of the public's view have turned against him or said he is unfit for office: Kelly, of course, is Exhibit A. But he's hardly alone: John Bolton, James Mattis, Mick Mulvaney, Betsy DeVos, Bill Barr, H.R. McMaster, Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell, Rex Tillerson, Mark Esper, Cassidy Hutchinson, and even his own former Vice President Mike Pence. This is a damning list, and — as far as I know — unique to Trump among presidents in the modern era.

There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical about breathless takes that Trump is going to destroy our democracy, or skeptical about anonymous sources attributing ugly comments to him. And there is more than enough good reason to believe that Trump won’t turn the U.S. military on his political opponents. But Trump is actually saying that’s what he’d do, and he and his team are going to need a much better response to the concerns about those statements — otherwise, these kinds of stories aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

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Your questions, answered.

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Under the radar.

A discovery in an underground brine reservoir in Arkansas could reshape the future of global energy production. On Monday, researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the Arkansas government announced they had found a trove of lithium in the reservoir of up to 19 million tons of the alkali metal. Lithium is a key ingredient in the production of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and many common electronic devices, and if the reservoir does contain millions of tons of lithium, it would be more than enough to meet all of the world’s demand for the metal. Currently, Australia and South America produce most of the world’s lithium, which is then processed in China, but this discovery could turn the U.S. into a major player. The New York Times has the story. 

Numbers.

• 50%. The percentage of U.S. adults who think former President Donald Trump is too extreme.
• 40%. The percentage of U.S. adults who think Vice President Kamala Harris is too extreme, according to an October 2024 YouGov poll. 
• 57%. The percentage of U.S. adults who are concerned about right-wing extremism in the U.S. 
• 57%. The percentage of U.S. adults who are concerned about left-wing extremism in the U.S. 
• 34%. The percentage of U.S. adults who think it is likely the U.S. will cease to be a democracy in the next 10 years. 
• 27%. The percentage of U.S. adults who think it is likely the U.S. will become a fascist dictatorship in the next 10 years. 
• 31%. The percentage of Americans who trust the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, according to an October 2024 Gallup poll. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the national deficit hitting $2 trillion.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the E. coli outbreak at McDonald’s.
• Nothing to do with politics: The two cities hosting the World Series top the list of best baseball cities.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,182 readers responded to our survey asking about early voting data with 84% saying the data is inconclusive. “What early voting tells us is that, for all of the fuss from some of the loudest voices about how terrible and rife with corruption it is, it’s actually what the people want. Americans are more willing (from all political leanings, not just the left) to participate in elections when we make it work for all of us,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Ursula Bannister, 79, makes a yearly hike to a viewpoint where she once spread her mother’s ashes. This year, Bannister broke her leg while traveling back down the steep trail. Search and rescue was 5 hours away and she was in great pain. Luckily, two individuals offered to carry her down the mountain, which she accepted. A variety of people helped Bannister make her way home, including a physical therapist who crafted a makeshift splint for her leg. “I was just overwhelmed with gratitude that these people literally came out of the woods to help me and they were totally unselfish and kind,” Bannister said. The Washington Post has the story.

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