JD Vance attempted to defend Donald Trump‘s threat to use the military to quash “the enemy within” by claiming Monday that it came from “the heart.”
“He’s not just running on slogans,” Vance told Fox News during a Monday appearance on America’s Newsroom. “When people ask him questions, he speaks from the heart sometimes that means he is going to talk about issues that the mainstream media isn’t focused on.”
Trump has repeatedly co-opted the title of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s 1950 speech, “the enemy within,” when referring to Democratic politicians and “radical-left lunatics.” The former president specifically named Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as examples of the “enemy.”
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On Sunday Trump called Schiff a “crooked politician” and a “threat to democracy” who “wanted to put my son in jail,” in an interview with Fox News. As for Pelosi, Trump has falsely claimed she refused the help of National Guard during the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol and branded her as “so sick” and “so evil.”
Vance chalked Trump’s comments up to him addressing “broken leadership” in the US, but also accused Schiff and Pelosi of being “part of weaponizing the Department of Justice against our country.”
“We do have people on the left, not most people on the left to be clear, but some people on the left who are encouraging violent responses to what we believe is going to be a Donald Trump victory,” the Ohio senator continued.
While Vance acknowledged “very important enemies to focus on overseas,” he claimed “if people are burning down our cities then of course we have a police response to that basic violation of our right to public security.”
The GOP vice presidential pick’s defense of his running mate comes days after he denied a new Trump administration would use military force on Trump adversaries.
Trump‘s increasingly dark messaging about using military power to stifle domestic unrest, according to Vance, stems from American voters’ concerns over “these terrible riots in the summer of 2020,″ referring to mass protests supporting Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
“When you have local rioters burning down American cities, when you have folks like Tim Walz encouraging rioters to go after local police stations, you need to have a federal response that reimposes law and order in this country,” he said, reiterating his false claim that Walz “actively encouraged” rioters in Minnesota.
While Vance harped on the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests during his Fox News appearance, he made no mention of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump, however, referred to the attempted insurrection, carried out by his supporters as “a day of love” and “a beautiful thing.”
