Former President Trump’s incendiary comments about deploying the military and using other powers of the executive branch to pursue his political enemies, including a sitting member of Congress, is putting downballot Republican candidates on the defensive.
GOP strategists have said for months that the fates of Senate and House Republican candidates are largely tied to Trump’s performance.
Republicans have grown more optimistic about their prospects of capturing Democratic-held Senate seats in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as Trump has gained ground on Vice President Harris in those states.
But Trump’s provocative comments about deploying the military to handle the “enemy from within” and “radical-left lunatics,” such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a prosecutor during Trump’s first impeachment trial, have put Republican candidates in an awkward spot.
“He certainly makes it difficult for downballot Republicans because people [in the media] will continually ask them to react to something outrageous Donald Trump has said when they really want to concentrate on their own race and their own message,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
Trump defended his comments during a Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday.
“I thought it was a nice presentation. That wasn’t unhinged,” he told Fox News host Harris Faulkner when the host played a clip of his controversial remarks.
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous,” Trump asserted. “They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick.
“These people — they’re so sick, and they’re so evil,” he said, singling out Schiff and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
A Republican strategist who requested anonymity to comment candidly on Trump’s remarks called them a problem for candidates downballot.
“It would be really disturbing to most Republican legislators if that were to occur because that’s not how we work as a country, that’s not how we behave as a democracy,” the strategist said of deploying the military against political enemies.
“If he were to try that, there would be a large pushback from Washington,” the source said.
The strategist said Trump is getting carried away by trying to project an image of strength.
“One of the things that he’s doing is projecting strength. It’s an undercurrent of this over-the-top ridiculous statement. He’s showing voters that he’s strong. Many people do want to see a strong president, but they would not agree with him going to that end,” the operative said.
Some Republican senators have tried to warn Trump away from threatening political vengeance if elected to a second term.
“This is not the direction we want this country to go,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said in June when Trump suggested he would prosecute his political enemies.
“I don’t want to see a tit-for-tat on prosecution. I think that’s the wrong direction. I think that’s the wrong path for us to go down,” he warned at the time.
But other Republicans, such as Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), have embraced Trump’s bellicose rhetoric.
After federal prosecutors indicted Trump in June of last year, Biggs posted on social media: “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye.”
Other Republican officeholders have struggled to explain or respond to Trump’s comments in recent interviews.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) sparred recently with CNN’s Jake Tapper over the comments, insisting that Trump was talking about criminals coming over the border. The CNN host cut him off by pointing out that Trump included Schiff as one of the “radical-left lunatics” who needed to be addressed.
Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.), a prominent House Republican, tried to dismiss Trump’s comments out of hand.
“Obviously, we don’t want to have the United States military — we’re not going to have that be deployed in the United States. That’s been long-standing law in our country since the founding of the Republican,” Donalds told CNN in an interview Tuesday.
But other Republicans warn that Trump’s comments can’t be taken lightly.
Former Trump Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he fears Trump would try to use the military against U.S. citizens.
“We should always take the comments of political leaders and other leaders seriously, absolutely,” Esper, a Republican, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
“I saw over the summer of 2020 where President Trump and those around him wanted to use the National Guard in various capacities in cities such as Chicago and Portland and Seattle,” he recalled, noting Trump’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests during his fourth year in office.
Retired Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is a “fascist to the core.”
Milley alluded publicly to his concerns about Trump during his retirement speech in 2023, when he said, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator or wannabe dictator.”
“It does create difficulties for Republican candidates who are asked to comment on Trump’s statements,” said Steven S. Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
But he observed that most voters have already made up their minds about Trump, and that he has made similar comments in the past.
“Those who support him are not going to change their views on the basis of these additional comments. The real question is, is there a small, very small percentage of Americans whose views on Trump will be affected by this? The answer is, yeah, potentially,” he said.
“It does keep some of these Republicans a bit off-message. It means that their free airtime is being used to respond to questions like this rather than to frame how voters are thinking about [the GOP candidates],” Smith said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) was pressed on Trump’s recent comments during a CNN interview Wednesday afternoon.
He conceded that a new Republican administration shouldn’t weaponize the justice system against political opponents but also tried to defend Trump by claiming the “left” had pursued politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of Trump and his allies.
“I’m not saying we should do a tit for tat at all, that’s not what should happen. But we do need to look at who’s trying to destroy our American system. Who’s trying to destroy the democracy that we have and taking a very, very hard look at it,” Mullin said.
“We’re too good of a country to do that,” he said of using national security assets against political opponents. “At the same time, we can’t be weaponizing our U.S. government against individuals, and we know that the left has done that. We’ve seen what they’ve done to President Trump. We’ve seen what they did after Jan. 6.”
Trump’s comments about using the power of government to punish political opponents has put the issue of democracy back in the spotlight two and a half weeks before Election Day, an issue on which Harris and Democrats have a decisive advantage with voters.
Sen. Bob Casey, the vulnerable Democratic incumbent in Pennsylvania, tried to score points on his opponent, hedge fund CEO David McCormick, at a debate Tuesday evening by criticizing him for hiring “fake electors” to work on his campaign.
Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Republican candidates will respond to Trump’s comments differently, depending on the needs of their races.
“Every Republican candidate is going to have to answer in a way that suits them the best, that helps them with voters. Some may try to reinterpret what Trump has said and others may deflect,” he said. “Other candidates may completely dodge.”
One candidate who has leaned into Trump’s views is Republican Kari Lake, who is trailing Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in the Arizona Senate race.
Lake said in a recent interview that federal prosecutors who charged Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the certification of the 2020 election are “tyrants” and urged that they be fired.
She made her comments in an interview with Brandon Straka, a social media influencer who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for his actions on Jan. 6.