Donald Trump has provoked an angry backlash from Democrats after calling for the US armed forces to be turned against his political adversaries when voters go to the polls at next month’s presidential election.
In comments that added further fuel to fears of an authoritarian crackdown if he recaptures the White House, the Republican nominee said the military or national guard should be deployed against opponents that he called “the enemy within” when the election takes place on 5 November.
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Trump’s comments, to Fox News in response to a question on possible election “chaos”, triggered an angry reaction from Kamala Harris’s campaign, which likened them to previous remarks that he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second presidency and his suggestions that the US constitution should be terminated to overturn the 2020 election result, which he falsely claims was stolen by Joe Biden.
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After initially saying election chaos would not come from his side, Trump launched a vituperative attack on his opponents when the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, raised the possibility of outside agitators or immigrants who had committed crimes.
“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people,” he said on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures programme.
“It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the national guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on fascism at New York University, told NBC that Trump was flagging up what he planned to do as president, which she compared to the “‘strongman’ ruling templates of Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin, the leaders of Hungary, India and Russia respectively.
“He’s actually rehearsing, in a sense, what he would be doing as head of state, which is what Orban does, Modi is doing, Putin has long done,” she said.