Trump Reveals First Targets on Military Hit List in Shocking Interview

At a Fox News town hall on women’s issues in Georgia taped Tuesday evening, Donald Trump spoke further of the “enemy within” that he wants to use the military against, specifically naming Democratic Representative Adam Schiff as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her family. *

“It is the enemy from within. And they’re very dangerous. They’re marxists and they’re communists and they’re fascists and they’re sick.” Trump said to Fox’s Harris Faulker. “I use a guy like Adam Schiff. They made up the Russia Russia Russia hoax.”

Trump went on to claim that enemies like Russia and China could be handled, but the Democrats were a different story. “The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil,” Trump said, adding that he was investigated “more times than Al Capone.”

“They’re the threat to democracy,” Trump said about his Democratic opponents to applause from the supportive audience.

In a weekend interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, Tru​​mp made an ominous threat to use the military against his critics and intervene in the election, claiming that they are a bigger threat than migrants, a favorite bugbear of his. His supporters struggled to defend his comments, with many Republicans denying them altogether.

Trump has never been a friend of Pelosi, although he did claim in August that one of her daughters said the two would be “perfect together,” which drew a vehement denial from one of said daughters, Christine Pelosi. Trump was also among many of the Republicans who laughed at the violent attack against Nancy’s husband, Paul, in 2022.

The former House speaker has never minced words about Trump, making it clear on January 6, 2021 how much she thought he was a threat to democracy, and highlighting in her book the warnings she received on Trump’s mental health from doctors and mental health professionals. As House speaker, she played a major role in both of Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021. Trump’s targeting of Nancy Pelosi and her family is another way in which he plans to take revenge against his enemies if he wins in November.

* This piece initially misstated Adam Schiff’s title.

It seems that Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t too happy with the glitchy canvassing efforts of Elon Musk’s America PAC.

Musk’s PAC is responsible for the majority of the Trump campaign’s ground game in several swing states. Musk himself has donated at least $75 million to the PAC, spent on advertisements and canvassers to get out the vote.

However, GOP operatives and conservative activists have seen little activity from Musk’s PAC in battleground states, and Trump’s allies are taking their complaints straight to the man in charge, Rolling Stone reported Wednesday.

“We were upfront about our concerns,” said one GOP operative close to Trump. The operative, who spoke anonymously with Rolling Stone, shared a screenshot of a text conversation that showed their reports from swing states had been relayed to the former president.

Several mega-donors and operatives who spoke to Rolling Stone pointed out that the America PAC is still searching for canvassers, according to a posting on its website. “Why isn’t the army already in place?” one donor asked rhetorically.

This complaint is consistent with descriptions of Musk’s operation. In true technocrat fashion, Musk’s canvassing efforts relies on a door-knocking app called Campaign Sidekick, which means that there is no way to actually verify whether volunteers in swing states are doing their jobs.

Sources told Rolling Stone that members of Trump’s camp have been complaining about his reliance on America PAC for weeks. Some in Trump’s inner circle don’t trust the PAC because of who’s actually in charge of it: two veterans of the Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential run, Phil Cox, who led the Never Back Down Super PAC, and Generra Peck, who served as DeSantis’s campaign manager before he dropped out.

“Why in the world would we trust them with anything?” one Trump adviser asked rhetorically.

It seems that Trump has been less than receptive to the warnings from his allies, though. “I can tell you from personal interactions with him that Donald Trump loves what Elon and his operation are doing in the battleground states, and nobody trying to convince him otherwise lately has had any effect,” one Trump political adviser told Rolling Stone. “As you can see, Trump has been saying at rallies how much he loves Elon and the work he’s putting in… Elon is going all in where it truly matters, especially in Pennsylvania, where his efforts are most visible.”

Rather than devote campaign resources to organizing canvassers, Trump has instead focused on motivating his supporters to act as poll watchers, leaving Musk in charge of rounding up hundreds of thousands of votes. As Trump has outsourced his ground game, his efforts have been dwarfed by Kamala Harris’s field campaign.

Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred had one prevailing message for Texans regarding Senator Ted Cruz: You can’t trust this guy.

Going head-to-head for the first time on Tuesday night, Allred systematically portrayed Cruz as failing to work for the Lone Star State, including torching the Republican for his response to the January 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol and for fleeing the state during times of hardship.

“After he’d gone around the country lying about the election, after he’d been the architect of the attempted overthrow of that election, when that mob came, Senator Cruz was hiding in a supply closet,” Allred said.

Cruz, in turn, shook his head and laughed weirdly. But the sordid detail first emerged from the 53-year-old’s own book, Justice Corrupted, which detailed Cruz’s escape into a “supply closet with stacked chairs” while Trump supporters descended on the legislature.

“And that’s OK, I don’t want him to get hurt by the mob, I really don’t. This election is his accountability. You cannot just be patriotic when your side wins,” Allred continued. “If for the first time in 250 years, this project of ours—this shared American project—that we did not have a peaceful transfer of power, the folks responsible have to be held accountable.”

Allred also attacked Cruz for his minuscule legislative accomplishments after more than a decade in office, which included joining a conservative effort earlier this year to bomb a bipartisan border deal to help Trump win the election. Cruz also faced the fire for his trip to Cancún in 2021, dipping out on the state—and his dog—during a historic winter storm that paralyzed Texas’s infrastructure. Allred leaned into a Texan saying to sum up Cruz’s efforts during his congressional tenure: “all hat and no cattle.”

“This is a pattern. He talks tough, but he never shows up,” Allred said. “Six more years of this? Come on. He’s had 12 years to do it already.”

Cruz, meanwhile, cast Allred as “radical and extreme,” lamenting that the native Texan would “change” Texas.

“We’re doing an awful lot right in the state of Texas,” Cruz said at the top of the debate. “Colin Allred wants to change that. I want to keep Texas Texas.”

After spending weeks trying to run away from his anti-abortion stance on the campaign trail, Senator Ted Cruz was held accountable by his opponent and the moderators of Tuesday night’s Texas Senate debate.

During the debate against Democratic challenger Representative Colin Allred, Cruz tried to dodge a question on whether he supported the right to an abortion in cases of rape and incest.

In Texas, abortion care is not permitted, except to save the mother’s life. When initially asked if he supported exceptions to the state’s draconian abortion law, Cruz gave a nonanswer, simply saying that states should determine their own laws.

“Well, listen, abortion is an issue that many Texans, many Americans, care deeply about, and it’s an issue that people of good faith can disagree,” Cruz said.

“You did not directly answer the question,” said debate moderator Gromer Jeffers, who again tried to push Cruz to respond to the question. “Why is this an issue you won’t address, about saying whether you support or oppose exceptions for rape and incest?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” asked an exasperated Cruz.

Cruz is clearly avoiding the question because he knows that abortion bans that don’t permit exceptions for rape and incest aren’t popular with voters, even in the state of Texas and even among Republicans.

He quickly tried to change the subject and accused Allred of allowing minors to get abortions without their parents’ permission. “He has voted in favor of striking down Texas law that gives parents the right to be notified and consent,” said Cruz. “He’s voted in favor of striking down Texas’ law and legalizing abortion up to and including the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy.”

“Senator Cruz just called himself pro-life. You’re not,” responded Allred. “It’s not pro-life to deny women care so long that they can’t have children anymore. It’s not pro-life to force a victim of rape to carry a their rapist baby. It’s not pro-life that our maternal mortality has skyrocketed up by 56 percent.

“When Ted Cruz says he’s pro-life, he doesn’t mean yours.”

Donald Trump babbled incoherently at a rally in Atlanta, Tuesday night, the latest in a series of untethered performances from the former president where his apparent cognitive decline showed on full display. 

“‘Thirty-two days, Mr. Congressman. Thirty-two,’ she goes. And the election will be in thirty-twoooooo daaaaaays. Thirty-two days,” Trump said to the audience, slurring his words. 

The former president was attempting to mock Kamala Harris for repeatedly announcing that she had only 32 days until the election during a rally speech. Trump claimed that she froze when the “teleprompter crashed.” 

And with that, Trump’s so-called “weave” carried him away.

“Ohhh, I would’ve loved to—you know, it kicked back in, it’s called a kickback. Like, some people know a lot about a kickback. It’s called a kickback. They know in this administration. But no, it’s a kickback, it kicks back in,” Trump garbled.  

Trump picking up on the minute details of Harris’s public speaking performances is particularly ironic considering the gibberish he was in the midst of delivering during his sleepy Tuesday night speech.

At one point, Trump complained about the “woke military,” playing an explicitly homophobic video that included clips from the antiwar film Full Metal Jacket (1987), and expressed his apparent love for world wars, a third of which he is constantly promising Americans is on the horizon. 

“So, we won two, BEAUTIFUL, biiiiiiiiiig, horrible—in many ways—we won two world wars with that attitude,” Trump said. 

This is only the latest scattered, strange performance that Trump has given this week, as his blitz of events seems to be catching up with him. 

Trump struggled to provide coherent answers to policy questions during an interview with the Economic Club of Chicago earlier Tuesday, and lashed out when faced with multiple fact-checks. 

During a town hall in Pennsylvania on Monday night, the Republican presidential nominee abruptly stopped taking questions, and instead had his team play music for 40 minutes while he silently swayed back and forth onstage. Occasionally, he even pretended to conduct.