Back in the runup to the presidential election, Michael George Glen Waltz, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, went scorched earth on CNN and then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), now a senator, for pushing lies to the American people, arguing in an appearance on the network on October 23 that Schiff is an “enemy within” because of what he did to push the Russia Hoax.
As background, now-Sen. Schiff was, during the first Trump term, one of the main figures on the left who used his power in Congress to advance the now-infamous Russia Hoax, something that, despite being outed as entirely false, caused significant issues for the Trump Administration and the US-Russian relationship.
Further, it was President Trump who coined the “enemy within” phrase to refer to Adam Schiff during an interview in mid-October with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on her show, “Sunday Morning Future.” That came when Bartiromo asked Trump what “will you do to guard against the bureaucrats, undermining you? In a second term.”
President Trump, in response, said that there are foreign enemies and “the enemy from within,” a term he quickly clarified meant hoaxsters like Adam Schiff. He said, “Well, I always say so. We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries. Because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily. I handled– I got along great with all of them. I handled them. But the thing that’s tougher to handle of these lunatics that we have inside.”
Continuing, Trump got to his comments about Adam Schiff having put America at risk by peddling lies, saying, “Like Adam Schiff, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, I think of this guy’s going to be a senator. He’s running against a guy that doesn’t understand politics at all. Garvey. But, he was a good baseball player, but he doesn’t understand politics at all. Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff who is a total sleazebag is going to become a senator. But I call him the enemy from within. When you look at the danger he put our country and potentially with Russia with a phony made-up deal that he made up with Hillary and some bad people, you know, that was that started off as an excuse for why she lost an election that a lot of people thought she should have won because the polls indicated she might win. And then she got beaten everywhere virtually.”
Predictably, CNN and others freaked out and started hectoring Trump’s allies about those “enemy within” comments, particularly those regarding Adam Schiff. Firing back at CNN when asked about the matter, Michael Waltz hammered the network for promoting Schiff and his lies, given the disastrous consequences of those lies for the Trump Administration.
Doing so when pressed on Trump’s comments, Waltz said, “You had Adam Schiff on this network and many others, lying to the American people, opening a hearing lying to the American people, saying that he had seen, but you raised him . . . saying he had seen no saying he had seen evidence of Russian collusion. That proved to be false, and our country was in total chaos for two years on a hoax, which also affected our relationship with Russia. So that is an enemy within.”
"*" indicates required fields
Waltz also hammered the lie that Trump was going to use the military against Adam Schiff, noting that Trump had said the military should assist, when necessary, in restoring law and order. Waltz said, ” I don’t think that he said that he’s going to use the military to target him. He said, In one part of the conversation, we have to quell riots and keep law and order, and if the military needs to support law enforcement, fine.”
Watch Waltz here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video