When Donald Trump recently started leaning into the idea that millions of Americans \u2014 citizens of his own country \u2014 should be seen as \u201cthe enemy within,\u201d<\/a> some of the former president\u2019s more sycophantic surrogates tried to suggest<\/a> the Republican didn\u2019t actually say what he said. Soon after, Trump doubled down<\/a>, making his perspective clear.<\/p>\n

Not only does Trump consider many Americans his \u201cenemy,\u201d<\/a> he even suggested that the U.S. military could be used against them<\/a> on domestic soil. Over the weekend, the GOP candidate continued to characterize<\/a> his political opponents as the \u201cenemy within,\u201d arguing that he sees many Democrats as more dangerous<\/a> than the United States\u2019 foreign adversaries.<\/p>\n

ABC News\u2019 Martha Raddatz asked Gov. Chris Sununu about the comments, and at least initially, the New Hampshire Republican conceded<\/a> the former president\u2019s rhetoric \u201cshould give everyone pause.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if the governor had simply stopped there, his response wouldn\u2019t have been especially notable. But in the same \u201cThis Week\u201d interview, Sununu went on to say<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
Nobody likes that type of stuff and that type of hyperbole. But, let\u2019s look, he was president for four years. Did he go after his political enemies? Did he weaponize the Department of Justice and go after Hillary Clinton? … Of course, he didn\u2019t do that, right?<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n
I\u2019ve heard a few defenses for Trump\u2019s \u201cenemy within\u201d rhetoric, but the governor\u2019s defense is easily the worst because it proved the opposite of his intended point.<\/p>\n
To hear Sununu tell it, the former president\u2019s rhetoric about his domestic \u201cenemies\u201d can be shrugged off as \u201chyperbole\u201d because he didn\u2019t try to weaponize the Justice Department to go after Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
The problem, whether the New Hampshire governor realizes this or not, is that Trump really did try to weaponize the Justice Department to go after Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
We know this, of course, because Trump made no effort to keep this secret. As regular readers know<\/a>, Trump publicly and privately begged prosecutors to charge Clinton<\/a> throughout his White House tenure.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Election Day 2020 \u2014 nearly four years after Clinton\u2019s defeat \u2014 the then-Republican president again<\/em> publicly called for<\/a> the Democrat\u2019s incarceration and lobbied<\/a> then-Attorney General Barr to prosecute the former secretary of state for reasons unknown.<\/p>\n
Sununu effectively told a national broadcast audience, \u201cWe can trust the arsonist not to follow through on his threats to start a lot of fires. After all, the last time we handed him matches and lighter fluid, he didn\u2019t set anything ablaze, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Except it\u2019s not right<\/em>. The arsonist set a lot of fires<\/em>. We all saw it happen<\/em>. I <\/a>kept the receipts<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n
Sununu asked, \u201cDid he go after his political enemies?\u201d What I don\u2019t understand is why the governor is unaware of the answer to his own question \u2014 because Trump absolutely went after his political enemies, over and over again<\/a>, and he\u2019s vowing to go further<\/a> in a second term.<\/p>\n
The New Hampshire Republican was trying to make Trump look better, but he ended up making Trump look worse for anyone who accurately remembers\u00a0what really happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Steve Benen<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of\u00a0MaddowBlog\u00a0and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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When Donald Trump recently started leaning into the idea that millions of Americans \u2014 citizens of his own country \u2014 should be seen as \u201cthe enemy within,\u201d some of the former president\u2019s more sycophantic surrogates tried to suggest the Republican didn\u2019t actually say what he said. Soon after, Trump doubled down, making his perspective clear. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}