Sen. J.D. Vance on Saturday defended former President Donald Trump’s comments in which he called Democratic leaders “the enemy within,” saying that inflation, declining military recruitment and the migrant crisis “are a far greater threat than any foreign threat.”
These problems, the Ohio Republican told NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” are “caused by broken leadership.”
“Look, when I look at the biggest threats to America, Kristen, I think the fact that people can’t afford groceries, the fact that we can’t meet our recruitment goals in the military, the fact that Americans have a wide open southern border, is a far greater threat than any foreign threat,” Vance told moderator Kristen Welker.
“And yes, it’s caused by broken leadership,” he added.
Vance specifically singled out former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a catalyst for America’s decline.
“Under Nancy Pelosi’s long life in public leadership, the United States has gone from being the world’s leading industrial power to being the second only to China,” Vance said. “That fundamentally falls on Nancy Pelosi’s shoulders, and if we want to have a more prosperous country, we have to recognize that our own leadership is the reason we lost our industrial base to China.”
Vance, who has become a leading voice defending or explaining Trump’s positions, attempted to clarify Trump’s remarks on Saturday, saying that “what [Trump] said is the greatest threat that we have in our country is not a foreign adversary, because we can handle these guys. We can handle foreign conflicts.”
Vance’s comments follow weeks of Trump arguing that Democrats, as the “enemy within,” are more dangerous to the future of the United States than foreign adversaries.
The former president told Fox News earlier this month, “We have the enemy without, and then we have the enemy within, and the enemy within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all of those countries.”
The former president also specifically named Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as two of those “enemies within” in separate remarks earlier this month.
“We’ve got China. We’ve got Russia. We’ve got all these countries. If you have a smart president, you can take them all on. The toughest ones are, you know, the Pelosis. These people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall.