“Really bad people” within the Democratic party pose a greater threat to the US than foreign adversaries, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has claimed.
With the November 5 vote fast approaching, the GOP firebrand and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, have of late been indulging in increasingly virulent personal attacks on one another.
A Wall Street Journal poll indicated on Wednesday that Trump was two percentage points ahead of Harris, however the Republican’s lead was within the survey’s margin of error. Recent polls by CNN and the New York Times have also shown the two contenders running neck and neck.
Appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Friday, the former president recounted that “we had no problem with” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The Republican hopeful went on to claim that “we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within.”
“We have people that are really bad people, that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful,” he went on to allege.
Trump has previously used the term with respect to his Democratic opponents.
During an interview on Fox News’ MediaBuzz show last Sunday, the former president characterized Democratic Representative Adam Schiff and former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi as “an enemy from within.”
Speaking during a CNN town hall on Wednesday, Harris replied in the affirmative when asked whether she believed Trump was a fascist. She went on to warn that if elected, the Republican hopeful would become a “president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
She cited a recent report by magazine The Atlantic, which is owned by Democrat mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs, which quoted Trump’s second chief of staff, General John Kelly, as suggesting that his former boss had expressed admiration for the leader of Nazi Germany. Trump's team denies the comments were ever uttered.
Responding to Harris’ attack in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, the former head of state charged that “Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly… so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind.”
The GOP nominee called his rival a “Threat to Democracy, and not fit to be President of the United States.”
As for the claims published by The Atlantic, the Trump team has dismissed them as “fabricated.”