As the 2024 campaign now approaches its final stretch, the former President Donald Trump draws attention to rhetoric about immigrants – and attack his enemies.
This comes as the candidates are effectively linked nationally and in battleground states, according to new reports. vote from CBS News. The former president also reiterated the warning he made throughout his campaign against what he called “the enemy within.”
At a campaign rally in the state of Arizona on Sunday, Trump focused on what has become a defining issue of his campaign: immigration.
“When I win on November 5, the migrant invasion will end and the restoration of our country will begin,” he said.
The former president pledged to hire 10,000 more Border Patrol agents, after opposing a bipartisan bill earlier this year that would have added 1,500 more agents. And he has ramped up his rhetoric on border policy more generally, saying the United States is “now known around the world as an occupied country.”
Trump also suggested using the military to go after the “enemy within” on Election Day in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday, singling out Democrats and those who oppose him or investigated him.
“We have some sick, crazy radical leftists,” Trump said Sunday. “And that should be very easily handled, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the Army.”
On Saturday, Trump said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff – who led the first impeachment proceedings against Trump and is now running for Senate – is among the “enemies within” at a rally in Coachella, Californiaas he portrayed Schiff and other rivals as threats to the county. On Friday, he called Vice President Kamala Harris “criminal” for her role in the Biden administration’s handling of immigration, a common line of attack in recent months.
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Trump has repeatedly used the label “insider threat” throughout his campaign to characterize his political opponents, a categorization that is drawing increasing attention as Election Day approaches.
In a November 2023 speech in New Hampshire, Trump used language that echoed Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini when he pledged to “extirpate communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs who live like vermin within the confines of our country.” “.
“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and serious than the threat from within,” Trump said in that speech. “Our threat comes from within.”
In a December 2023 speech, also in New Hampshire, Trump said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
On immigration, Sunday’s comments were also just the latest example of how Trump’s rhetoric has become increasingly pointed as he makes the issue his campaign closing speech 2024.
To a rally in Aurora, Colorado, Fridaywhich became a focal point of the former president’s speech on border security, Trump cited criticism he received for calling immigrants “rapists” during the last election, among a number of derogatory comments he has made towards people seeking to enter the United States, while suggesting that the country’s new landscape requires a whole new vocabulary.
“These statements are peanuts compared to what is happening to our country,” Trump said. “These are the worst criminals in the world… These people are the most violent on the planet.”
The former president said he would “save Aurora and every city that has been invaded and conquered,” pledging to put “cruel, bloodthirsty criminals in prison or expel them from our country.”
“You can’t live with these people,” Trump said. “They’re cold killers. You could walk down the street with your husband, you’d both be dead.”
Trump said he hoped Colorado would vote to protest “what they’ve done to the fabric of your culture.”
At recent rallies, Trump has called migrants “animals” and said they are coming to America from “third world dungeons” to “prey on innocent American citizens.”
On Friday, Trump also pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which was used in wartime to round up or expel citizens of enemy countries from the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters appear to be reacting to the politicization of the border issue, which was one of the most defining issues for Republicans in the election.
Among Trump voters, 65% believe the Biden administration has tried to increase the number of migrant crossings at the southern border, according to a CBS News poll. And of the people who say this, nearly three-quarters say it’s happening because the administration wants noncitizens to vote. Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections, and illegal crossings at the southern border have reached their lowest point since Mr. Biden’s presidency in September.
