Vance defends Trump's 'enemy from within' comments

As a former president Donald Trump has repeated his “enemy from within” line on the campaign trail to refer to political opponents, his running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), came to his defense and said “broken” leadership in the United States is worse than any foreign opponent of the country.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the pressVance was asked or he thought that the political opponents Trump referred to in his comments, especially Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), are “more dangerous” than foreign adversaries such as Russia and China.

“Well, I think what Donald Trump said is that those people are a greater threat to the peace and security of the United States because America is strong enough to face any foreign adversary,” Vance said, before he was pressured into whether he thought certain political opponents “posed a much greater threat” than Russia and China.

“What he said – and I agree – what he said is that the biggest threat we have in our country is not a foreign adversary, because we can handle these guys. … Look, under Nancy Pelosi’s long life in public leadership, the United States has gone from being the world’s preeminent industrial power to second only to China. That fundamentally belongs on the shoulders of Nancy Pelosi. And if we want to have a more prosperous country, we must recognize that our own leadership is the reason we lost our industrial base to China. Our own leadership is failing to lead this country to peace and prosperity,” Vance said.

Trump was criticized after using the phrase in a Fox News interview with Maria Bartimo earlier this month.

In that interview he said said“We have the enemy from without, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

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He also said that “it should be handled very easily by, if necessary, the National Guard, or, if really necessary, by the military.”

Trump recently too claimedwithout evidence, that an “enemy from within” leaked top secret US intelligence documents involving Israel. The FBI is investigating that incident.