America Is Playing With Fire

With just under two weeks to go until Election Day, here is how Donald Trump, in his own words, defines his agenda.

On Oct. 13, he promised to prioritize the prosecution of U.S. citizens — “domestic threats more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries” — over foreign threats, warning that he would jail American men and women he considers disloyal, using military force if necessary.

“The bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump told Fox News that same day:

We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.

The enemies from within, in Trump’s view, include elected officials. Trump specifically identified Adam Schiff, the California congressman and ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during the Trump presidency, who is now running for the Senate: “The thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff.”

Trump signaled the magnitude of his plans in a July 19, 2023, Truth Social post:

This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates us, we will rout the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.

And here he is again, on June 13, at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., after having been arraigned in Miami on 37 criminal charges: “I will totally obliterate the deep state.”

While Trump’s domestic agenda focuses on the enemy within, Trump saves much of his praise for adversaries of the United States:

Vladimir Putin: “A genius” who “liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he — and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country.”

Xi Jinping: “Top of the line. President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find, there’s nobody like that: the look, the brain, the whole thing.”