Trump: troops should be deployed against the ‘left’ on election day

Washington y New York. Donald Trump called for the deployment of National Guard or military troops on Election Day not to confront any foreign threat such as China or Russia, or immigrants, but to confront what he called the “enemy within”: his opponents.

In comments that an expert on fascism suggested could be a rehearsal for actions the Republican presidential candidate might take if he wins the White House, Trump was asked if he had concerns about terrorist attacks or immigrants on Election Day. “I think the biggest problem is the internal enemy,” he responded in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. “We have some very bad people, we have sick people: radical left lunatics.” That “enemy,” he added, “should be very easily confronted, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if it is really necessary, by the military, because they cannot allow that to happen.”

Trump reiterated that none of his supporters represent a threat to free and fair elections, despite the fact that the story has another version; He incited his followers to stop the peaceful transfer of executive power for the first time in the country’s history in the election he lost in 2020. Pointing to those who represent that “threat,” he said it came from Democrats like the Senate candidate Adam Schiff of California, who as a congressman led Trump’s impeachment process.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris condemned Trump’s statements, commenting this Monday that they put freedom at risk in this country. At the same time, his campaign used the comments about the “enemy within” for a new round of electoral advertising.

These comments from Trump, explained Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, could be a preview of what the Republican could try if he wins the election. “He is really rehearsing, in a sense, what he could do as head of state, the same thing that Orban, Modi, Putin have done for a long time,” he commented in an interview with NBC News when comparing Trump to the leaders of Hungary, India and Russia. “This is right out of the autocratic playbook. By consolidating their power, anything that threatens their power, reveals their corruption, or spreads information that harms them in any way becomes illegal,” he added.

These warnings are not surprising, not only opponents but senior officials and officials who worked in Trump’s presidency agree. No one less than the former chief of the General Staff – the top commanders of the armed forces – when Trump was president told journalist Bob Woodward that “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump.” In his recently published book, Woodward quotes this officer, General Mark Milley, stating that “I now realize that he is a total fascist.”

More than 200 former Trump collaborators during his presidency, including former senior officials, have declared that they will vote for his opponent Harris above all to avoid a second term for the magnate. This month, the New York Times published comments from some 91 former aides, advisers and allies, including military leaders, chiefs of staff, lawmakers and diplomats, saying their former boss is unfit for the job. “He always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego above everything else, including the interests of the country,” declared former Attorney General Bill Barr, just one example.

However, not even Trump’s increasingly extreme comments – from the criminal persecution of his opponents and critics, to his McCarthyite effort to paint his opponents as “communists, Marxists, radical leftists”, to playing that “I will be a dictator” for a day” and his central attack that there is “an invasion of illegals” from Mexico, immigrants who are “poisoning the blood of our country” and who eat American pets-, are not having much impact nor do they seem to bother too much to his supporters, according to polls. In fact, a recent poll found that 70 percent of the population has been offended by something Trump has said, but many of those same people say they could vote for him, including Latinos and African Americans.

““I don’t pay much attention to the news,” says Cristal Bailey, a voter in California, interviewed by the New York Times. “But I know Trump is honest. And yes, a little bit racist, but I feel like I could be just as racist as the neighbors next door.” Bailey, who is African-American, intends to vote for the little racist. Shirley Treviño, a Latina voter, told the newspaper that she feels offended by the way Trump talks about women, but added, “I’m not offended by the things he says about Hispanics, because he speaks a lot of truth. People are coming here illegally, and they need to submit to the legal process. He will also vote for Trump.

Trump’s attacks on what he says is the “establishment” are echoed by people who believe they have been ignored by the political and economic system, especially working-class voters without a college education who have suffered loss of manufacturing jobs and fear that The future will be worse for them and their children. In this country, 65 percent of adults do not have a college education, and that level is even higher in key states such as Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“The big question,” says historian Ben-Ghiat, is whether Trump could manage to centralize more power if he wins. During his first term, military and political leaders say they limited him by refusing to follow orders or divert dangerous decisions. But Trump has said he will purge the federal bureaucracy and only appoint stalwarts, rhetoric with which Ben Ghiat says he is preparing his supporters for a more dangerous and less democratic turn in government. “This is about criminalizing dissent,” he said, adding that “there is a method to that madness that has taken people on a journey of indoctrination.”

General Milley, former chief of staff, reported that in 2020 Trump threatened to order two retired generals back to active duty with the aim of subjecting them to a military trial for insubordination. Milley now believes this could happen to him if Trump returns to the White House. “He is a walking, talking advertisement for what he will try to do,” Milley told Woodward in his new book War.