Trump’s anti-immigrant, domestic “enemy” rhetoric in focus in final stretch to Election Day

With the 2024 campaign now approaching the final stretch, former President Donald Trump is drawing attention for rhetoric about immigrants — and going after his enemies. 

It comes as the candidates are effectively tied nationally and in the battleground states, according to new polling from CBS News. The former president has also reiterated a warning made throughout his campaign of what he called the “enemy from within.”

At a campaign rally in the battleground state of Arizona on Sunday, Trump focused on what has become a defining issue of his campaign: immigration. 

“When I win on Nov. 5, the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins,” he said. 

The former president pledged to hire 10,000 more border patrol agents, after earlier this year opposing a bipartisan bill that would have added 1,500 more personnel. And he ramped up his rhetoric on border politics more broadly, claiming that the U.S. is “now known all throughout the world as an occupied country.”

Trump also suggested using the military to go after the “enemy from within” on Election Day in an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday, pointing to Democrats and those who oppose or have investigated him. 

“We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” Trump said Sunday. “And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

On Saturday, Trump said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff — who led the first impeachment against Trump and is now running for Senate — is among the “enemies from within” at a rally in Coachella, California, as he painted Schiff and other rivals as threats to the county. On Friday, he called Vice President Kamala Harris a “criminal” for her role in the Biden administration’s handling of immigration, a common attack line in recent months.

Trump has repeatedly used the “threat from within” label throughout his campaign to label his political opponents, a categorization that’s drawn increased attention as Election Day nears. 

In a November 2023 speech in New Hampshire, Trump used language that echoed Adolf Hitler and fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini when he pledged to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” Trump said in that speech. “Our threat is from within.”

In a December 2023 speech, also in New Hampshire, Trump said that 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 grown increasingly pointed, as he makes the issue his closing pitch of the 2024 campaign. 

At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, which has become a focal point of the former president’s pitch on border security, Trump cited the criticism he received for calling immigrants “rapists” in the last election, among a number of derogatory comments he’s made about people seeking to enter the U.S., while suggesting that the new landscape in the country requires a whole new vocabulary.

“Those statements are peanuts compared to what’s happening to our country,” Trump said. “These are the worst criminals in the world… These people are the most violent people on Earth.”

The former president said he would “rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,” pledging to put “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country.”

“You can’t live with these people,” Trump said. “These are stone-cold killers. You could be walking down the street with your husband, you’ll both be dead.” 

Trump said he hoped Colorado would vote in protest for “what they have done to the fabric of your culture.”

In recent rallies, Trump has called migrants “animals,” and said that they are coming to America from “dungeons of the Third World,” to “prey upon innocent American citizens.”

On Friday, Trump also pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used during war times to round up or remove citizens of enemy countries from the U.S. 

Meanwhile, Trump supporters have appeared to respond to the politicization of the border issue, which has been among the most defining for Republicans up and down the ballot. 

Among Trump voters, 65% believe the Biden administration has tried to increase the number of migrant crossings at the southern border, according to CBS News polling. And among the individuals who say so, 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 reached the lowest point of Mr. Biden’s presidency in September.