The Real Enemy Within

President Donald Trump speaks to top US military commanders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/Pool via AP

In 2016, while campaigning for president, Hillary Clinton remarked at a fundraiser in New York that half of Trump’s supporters could be put into “what I call the basket of deplorables,” noting this included “the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.” The political media, the Trump campaign, and Republicans went berserk. They disregarded the rest of her statement, in which she noted the “other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change” and observed that “we have to understand and empathize with” these people.

“How dare she denigrate voters?!” much of the political/media class exclaimed. Trump tweeted, “Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people.” Clinton quasi-apologized saying she had been “grossly generalistic” and regretted using the word “half.”

Nine years later, we live in a world in which Trump routinely denigrates his political opposition and its supporters as treasonous, America-hating radicals, socialists, fascists, communists, and satanists—and that’s not a big deal. As I noted in a recent issue, since 2020, Trump has been assailing Democrats, liberals, and progressives as a dangerous “radical left” waging war on America. This is a perilous demonization that has not drawn the outrage it deserves. And in the past year, Trump has added another vile phrase to his lexicon of vilification: “the enemy within.”

His use of this term during a rambling speech to US military commanders this week did draw some notice. He falsely claimed, “We're under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy,” and remarked that the US military could use American cities as “training grounds” as they battle “the enemy from within.” In this instance, Trump was deploying the phrase to conjure up the image of hordes of migrants attacking Americans—another one of his big lies.

But Trump has tended to brandish the “enemy within” accusation to tar critics and political foes, suggesting there is a traitorous and subversive element in the United States that seeks to destroy it from the inside. This is akin to the rhetoric Red-baiters hurled during the 1950s. And as Trump seeks to amass and consolidate power, he’s wielding it to delegitimize anyone who might stand in his way.

Shortly after he entered the White House the first time, Trump began referring to the media as the “enemy of the people”—which the New York Times described as a phrase “typically used by leaders to refer to hostile foreign governments or subversive organizations” and “the language of autocrats who seek to minimize dissent.” He would come to expand his “enemy” rhetoric. During a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire in 2023, he vowed to “root out” the “radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” and proclaimed that the “threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within.”

In the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Trump throttled up his “enemy from within” assault. At an October 9, 2024, rally, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he said that Vice President Kamala Harris was surrounded by "very smart, very vicious people" who are "the enemy from within." Two days later at a rally in Reno, Nevada, he said “vicious, horrible people—I call it the enemy from within” were trying to rig the election against him. On October 13, appearing on Fox News, he referred to then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as "the enemy from within.” He elaborated: “So we have two enemies, we have the outside enemy and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia.” A week later, again on Fox News, Trump said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “an enemy from within.” And at a campaign event at his Doral country club in Florida, he said, “We have an enemy from within, they hate to talk about it.” The audience applauded.

Now that he’s back in power, talking about deploying the military in American cities, assaulting free speech, targeting universities, forcing the Justice Department to prosecute his critics and political foes (such as former FBI Director James Comey), it’s alarming that Trump is reviving his “enemy from within” charge.

The history of this phrase and its past usage is well known—and ugly. Its variant—“enemy of the people”—was applied to opponents of the French Revolution who were led to the guillotine. (This included people accused of supposedly spreading false news to sow division within the populace.) Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, wrote in 1941, “Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people...[H]e is an enemy of the people.” Lenin decried his political rivals as “enemies of the people,” and Stalin expanded the use of that term and turned it into a death sentence. Mao branded critics of his policies “enemies of the people.”

In his infamous 1950 “Enemies From Within” speech, Sen. Joseph McCarthy falsely claimed to have a list of dozens of commies who had “infested” the State Department, and he bellowed, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without but rather because of enemies from within.” He asserted the United States was threatened more from internal evildoers than overseas adversaries: “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful, potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this nation.”

In Nikita Khrushchev’s famous, then-secret address to the Communist Party congress in 1956 denouncing Stalin—which was titled “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences”—he railed against Stalin for having “originated the concept ‘enemy of the people’” (which Stalin couldn’t truly take credit for):

It made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations. The concept "enemy of the people" actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one's views known on this or that issue, even [issues] of a practical nature.

Khrushchev, no friend of democracy, was right about this. Leaders who rely on such rhetoric do so to smother debate and justify tyrannical action.

Trump’s revival of this dangerous phrase—in front of the entire top brass of the US military—is yet another warning of his authoritarian intent. He’s not interested in cutting legislative deals with Democrats. He’s out to delegitimize anyone who would try to check his power and to generate hatred against them. (Democratic congressional leaders ought to realize that.) Having refused to abide by election results, connived to overturn them, and incited insurrectionist violence to subvert the constitutional order, Trump is the most significant internal enemy the republic has faced since the Civil War. Naturally, he attempts to cast his opponents in that role, for, as history shows, this charge is the refuge of scoundrels, demagogues, and dictators.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

This past week, the New York Times published a lengthy profile of Russell Vought, the White House budget director who is the lead commander in Trump’s crusade to destroy the federal government. As the piece notes, Vought, a far-right policy maven, for years has plotted how Trump and the GOP can destroy the regulatory powers of federal agencies so corporations can run wild and the rest of us must live at their mercy, with fewer environmental safeguards and consumer, workplace, and economic protections. Yet in all the thousands of words devoted to this MAGA strategist, the newspaper could not mention a key fact: Vought is a Christian nationalist.

The article points out that Vought, an architect of Project 2025, attended a Christian college, regularly quotes the Bible, never curses (gee whiz!), leads adult Bible study classes at his Baptist church, and, according to his pals, “is deeply driven by his faith.” But it omits an important piece: that faith itself.

Last summer two reporters for a British journalism nonprofit who were posing as relatives of a wealthy conservative donor secretly recorded a conversation with Vought. They published a video of the meeting, and CNN reported on their encounter with Vought:

In the conservative movement, “we’ve been too focused on religious liberty, which we all support, but we’ve lacked the ability to argue we are a Christian nation,” Vought argued—an idea he’s also talked about publicly. “Our laws are built on the Judeo-Christian worldview value system.”

He said that conservatives should push to have debates over whether to allow mosques to be built in America’s downtowns, and whether Christian immigrants should be prioritized over those of other faiths—ideas that run contrary to First Amendment protections.

“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation,” Vought added later. “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”

The desire of one of the most powerful and influential officials in Trump’s administration to turn the United States into a “Christian nation” is a significant piece of the picture. Much more so than the fact Vought leads Bible study classes.

Last week’s winner—a fella named Donald Trump—could probably collect the trophy every week, including this one. A few days ago, he referred to the January 6 riot he incited as the “January 6th Hoax.”

Yes, every misdeed or illegal act Trump commits is a hoax. The Russia hoax. The impeachment hoax. The Covid hoax. The stolen classified documents hoax. The tax fraud hoax. The second impeachment hoax. The porn-star payoff hoax. The 2020 election hoax. The Epstein hoax. Doesn’t his base ever wonder about all these hoaxes? It’s hard to believe the Deep State, as diabolical as it is, could orchestrate so many hoaxes. I guess it never sleeps. So now there’s also the 1/6 hoax—whatever it might be.

In that social media post, Trump took a recently revealed fact—that 274 FBI agents were at the Capitol during the January 6 assault—and tried to spin it into yet another conspiracy theory. But the agents there, according to FBI Director Kash Patel, had been quickly dispatched to the scene after Trump’s brownshirts had begun to attack Congress so they could try to stop this domestic terrorism. They were not part of any false flag plot. They were attempting to end the violence Trump sparked with his lies.

Trump was peddling bunk. So naturally, House Speaker Mike Johnson had to dish out the same swill:

These days, it often seems that Trump administration pays more attention to trolling than governing. The social media feeds of several federal agencies have turned into cesspools, including the one for the Department of Homeland Security, which recently put out this message stating communists and terrorists would be denied entry to the United States. On that list, too, is “Globalist.”

How might theses shitposters define “globalist?” I bet they can’t. But that’s not the point. The word has a long history as a coded term for Jews used by antisemites. Here’s what the American Jewish Committee has to say about that:

Much like dual loyalty, globalist is used to promote the antisemitic conspiracy that Jewish people do not have allegiance to their countries of origin, like the United States, but to some worldwide order—like a global economy or international political system—that will enhance their control over the world’s banks, governments, and media. The idea of a Jewish globalist was embedded in the core ideology of Nazism. Hitler often portrayed Jews as “international elements” who “conduct their business everywhere,” posing a threat to all people who are “bounded to their soil, to the Fatherland.”

Today, globalist is a coded word for Jews who are seen as international elites conspiring to weaken or dismantle “Western” society using their international connections and control over big corporations—all echoing the destructive theory that Jews hold greed and tribe above country.

The DHS is in very fine company, eh?

Vice President JD Vance was back in contention with a mean-spirited remark that was even outrageous for him:

If you're an American citizen and you've been to the hospital in the last few years, you've probably noticed that wait times are especially large & very often somebody who's there in the ER waiting is an illegal alien. Very often a person who can’t even speak English. Why do those people get healthcare benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?

So when a guy who’s helping to renovate your house falls off the roof and breaks a limb, you don't want him getting any services from a hospital, right? That's exactly what Jesus would say.

Stephen Miller appears to be going apeshit more often than usual these days—or, at least, getting much louder. On Fox News, he exclaimed, "They say they’re trying to kill the fascists, they’re trying to stop the fascists. This is deliberate. President Trump is saying that we as a nation are not going to tolerate it anymore and the joint terrorism task force at the FBI is going to find these terrorists and we're going to put them behind bars."

Picking up on this point. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), suggested that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) ought to be arrested for domestic terrorism because he referred to Miller as a “fascist.”

Well, let’s go to the videotape—or the past social media posts of Miller:

I suppose Van Orden will now have to recommend Miller be apprehended and charged with domestic terrorism. Maybe Miller will turn himself in.

For the winner this week, the judges landed on a comment that showed a record-setting degree of obliviousness. Former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona was irked by Trump posting a doctored photo of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, in which a handlebar moustache and sombrero were added to Jeffries. “C’mon, fellow Republicans, we’re better than this,” Flake bemoaned.

Did Flake just emerge from a coma? Senator, your g-ddamn party for nearly 10 years has been supporting a lying rogue who tried to overturn an election and incited insurrectionists to subvert the republic and who’s currently creating a secret police force, destroying America’s scientific research infrastructure, threatening free speech and democracy, exacerbating the climate crisis, and wrecking the economy. But you’re upset about a juvenile and no-class tweet? The judges are sending the trophy to Flake this week with a big bottle of smelling salts.

This past week, federal district court Judge William Young delivered a major blow to the Trump administration when he ruled that its policy of targeting pro-Palestinian students for deportation violated the First Amendment. But it wasn’t merely what he did that commanded attention but how he did it. His 161-page ruling was a total excoriation of Trump. But he added to its opening page an anonymous threatening letter he had received, and he set up his decision as a response to that cowardly correspondent.

Young opened his ruling by quoting the First Amendment in its entirety. Then he proceeded with a slam dunk:

This case—perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court—squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.” “No law” means “no law.” The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence. See Section III.A infra. No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike…

Having carefully considered the entirety of the record, this Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with the subordinate officials and agents of each of them, deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble of the non-citizen plaintiff members of the plaintiff associations.

Later in the decision, Young noted “the problem this President has with the First Amendment.” He explained:

Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with “retribution.” “I am your retribution,” he thundered famously while on the campaign trail. Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment. The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech. It is at this juncture that the judiciary has robustly rebuffed the President and his administration.

Toward the end of his missive, Young presented a Ronald Reagan quote: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.” And he concluded with this observation:

I’ve come to believe that President Trump truly understands and appreciates the full import of President Reagan’s inspiring message—yet I fear he has drawn from it a darker, more cynical message. I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?

On. The. Nose.

In the wake of Trump’s speech to the generals and admirals, many Our Landers—like many American citizens—voiced concern that Trump is aiming to use violence and perhaps the military to expand his power, influence the midterms, and even mess with or prevent the 2028 election. Barbara Rendina wrote:

This might be an old worn-out idea, but my senses tell me, based on real history, that Trump is gathering a new gang/army that he can summon to riot a la January 6. But these people will be better trained, outfitted, armed and loyal to him (if that’s possible). And they’re already stationed far and wide in states with Democratic governors. All he’d have to do is trigger a war with his big mouth. Tell me I’m crazy. Do you see any indication of that? 

With Trump anything is possible. But I don't see any signs of him organizing his own private militia at this point. No doubt, he could try to summon one as he did for January 6. Prior to his pardons of these violent miscreants, the response to such a call might have been muted. But with the pardons, he has certainly emboldened his extremist base, and I assume many would come running to his assistance. But he many not need to ponder this option. He appears more intent on deploying the military for domestic use to serve his political and personal agenda. That's the immediate threat, and it is not paranoid to wonder if he sees the current deployments as test cases for future scenarios.

Sarah Wall zeroed in on one of the many outrages of recent weeks:

It’s all maddening but by far the worst (he’s making it easy to out-superlative a superlative) is the Milei bailout. I thought Republicans were against foreign aid yet, here we are bailing Argentina’s sinking boat. This will be us next.

The $20 billion in loan guarantees to prop up the Argentine economy is hardly an America First move. But Trump and his aides have made clear their goal is to help President Javier Milei prevail in the upcoming legislative elections. It’s despicable on many fronts. It’s happening while Trump and Republicans are slashing health spending so millions of Americans will soon face steeply rising premiums. And this move comes after Trump and the GOP cut billions of dollars in assistance that helped millions of people overseas stay alive in the face of disease and famine. If a Democrat did something like this, MAGA, Fox, and the rest of them would have a fit. But there are no such objections in the Trump cult.

Greg Hill edified me on an important matter:

One of my personal pet peeves is the incorrect usage of the words "podium" and "lectern.” Podium derives from the Greek word "pod" meaning "foot.” It is a thing upon which one stands. Lectern refers to that which a speaker stands behind and upon which the speaker can place his/her notes. So, I'd argue that the caption on the first photo in your September 27, 2025, issue is incorrect as Trump is still standing on the podium, but he has moved away from the lectern. I otherwise quite enjoyed your "random thoughts" and appreciate the way you continuously keep Trump's to the fire.

A reader named Sue S. reacted to recent items on the racist rants of Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.):

It would be helpful if someone like Bill Maher did not give her publicity on his show.

Alas, reckless and irresponsible politicians can make for good TV. Look who’s in the White House.

“Nice haircut, Moxie.”
“You don’t think it makes me look too prissy?”
“Not at all. And looks can be deceiving.”
“Can I get a tattoo?”