Attacking the Enemy Within, Aiding the Outside Enemy

Promises made, promises kept

One of Donald Trump’s frequently repeated campaign talking points in 2024 was that the “enemies within” were the greater danger than the “outside enemy.” Here I feel I must once again quote from one particular Fox News interview, because the way it was quoted in other outlets missed a rather important Freudian slip that I emphasize here:

I always say, 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 get along great with all—I handled them. But the thing that's tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff.

Donald Trump, in his own words, gets along great with Russia and China, but sees Democrats as the greater threat to our country, c’est him.

He promised retribution aimed at “the enemy within” and he has followed through on this. Protect Democracy has tracked 36 instances of what they’re calling retaliation, and number which seems to me to be a very low estimate, but they provide a wealth of details on each individual case they are following. From opening DOJ investigations into California governor Gavin Newsom or Minnesota governor Tim Walz to spurious charges against protesters, the Trump administration has sought to punish their enemies, a list which seems to only include anyone that resists their political agenda.

This escalated quite aggressively yesterday, as Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker report for the Associated Press:

Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed focus to the frequent target of Trump administration derision in the final weeks of her reelection bid.

The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that will determine control of the House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding Justice Department protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an election.

Trump has been obsessed with Omar specifically in a quite nakedly racist manner, frequently disparaging Somalis as“low IQ” and overtly seeking a path to deporting her. Stephen Miller’s wife meanwhile decided that everyone was being a bit too subtle about all this and shared a story about the raid with the message “promises made, promises kept.” She quickly deleted this as someone no doubt let her know that this would not likely help the case against this particular “enemy within.”

As usual in our environment where MAGA relentlessly ups the ante, media attention to this story has been transient. Less than a day later, the Associated Press, NBC News, and CBS News are the only major news outlets where I can find this story above the fold.

Screenshots from media outlets taken on October 13, 2026 at 8:30 AM ET

This is very much a five-alarm fire for our democracy. Unfortunately, when the arsonists are running from building to building starting new conflagrations, many five-alarm fires will be neglected by fire departments spread thin. Somebody call the police.

Getting along great with an outside enemy

Just as it is difficult to focus on any given five-alarm fire set by the Trump administration at home, it is difficult to rank the national humiliations he has brought about in his foreign policy. But cozying up to Russia simply because fuel prices have gone up due to his own incompetence in Iran must surely be close to the top. As James Bikales, Ashley Ahn, and Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing report for Politico:

The Trump administration moved Friday to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel as President Donald Trump said Moscow had agreed to release large quantities of the fuel and suggested the U.S. could be a buyer.

The surprise announcement is the Trump administration’s latest effort in its struggle to bring the record diesel prices—caused by the ongoing war against Iran as well as Ukrainian attacks against Russian refineries—under control ahead of the midterm elections.

Not content to simply stab Ukraine in the back by funding the other side, Trump opted to stab them in the front, threatening to stop sharing intelligence if they kept blowing up Russian oil refineries.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to blow up civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Trump’s action is almost certainly illegal, but that’s really besides the point. He is openly supporting an adversary nation, an outside enemy not to him but to our country, one that is engaged in a campaign of violent conquest against one of our allies, and all because he wants to lower energy costs so that his party has a better chance of winning an election. If his is not the behavior of an “enemy within,” I don’t know what is.

At least the EU has more and more found its backbone as this conflict has intensified and Trump has actively alienated them through his actions. Chris Powers at the Kyiv Independent reports:

EU foreign ministers voted through almost 1,600 new restrictions targeting Russia's military-industrial complex on Oct. 12, the largest single addition to the sanctions lists ever.

The new listings target industry players ranging from shipyards and aviation companies to electronics manufacturers, armored vehicle repair facilities, and aerospace companies, and were first reported on by the Kyiv Independent on Sept. 21.

RFK Jr.’s CDC is launching a Tuskegee-style atrocity

Melody Schreiber reports for the Guardian:

A controversial research trial that will withhold hepatitis B vaccines from some African newborns was given approval to move forward this week.

It is a central part of the vaccine vision for Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime vaccine opponent.

At an anti-vaccine conference last month, Kennedy praised the Danish researchers behind the trial and touted US-supported research on hepatitis B in newborns as exemplifying the Trump administration’s agenda for vaccines, which has included slashing vaccine recommendations and casting doubt on the safety and effectiveness of shots.

Emphasis added by me, because that is the aspect that we need to focus on. The anti-vax tactic is to couch things in terms of scientific scrutiny, that we simply need more information, we need to be sure. But if you know something works, if there is already abundant data and evidence of this, withholding it from patients in order to gather more evidence is incredibly unethical and cruel. That is exactly how racist cranks operate—it is exactly what they did in Tuskegee. RFK Jr. continues to be the figure that draws the least actual outrage among the Trump coterie, but his actions will almost certainly lead to the highest body count in its wake, with perhaps Elon Musk’s rivaling it.

Shopping for another election

Speaking of Elon Musk, he’s dumping cash into the Republican side once again. As Theodore Schleifer reports for the New York Times:

Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.

The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms.

And as Fredreka Schouten at CNN reports, Musk’s super PAC is unsurprisingly spreading “inaccurate voting information”:

The texts from Elon Musk’s super PAC arrived last week, all with the same message to a group of Colorado voters: “Your ballot request is in,” they read. “Confirm now where and when to return it.”

But every active registered voter in Colorado automatically receives a mail ballot, and the message from Musk’s America PAC set off a flurry of calls and emails from confused residents to county offices.

…Election officials in Colorado and Washington state have issued public warnings about inaccurate information from the group tied to Musk, the billionaire who is spending heavily to sway the midterm elections in Republicans’ favor.

Ken Paxton is the gift that keeps on giving

Candidate for Senate in Texas Ken Paxton is more scandal than man in many ways, and yesterday brought news of yet more. Elizabeth Findell, Mark Maremont and Josh Dawsey report for the Wall Street Journal:

As fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to welcome 2025, Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon watched from a luxury high-rise balcony full of people, according to a video of the gathering viewed by The Wall Street Journal, details of which were contained in court filings and confirmed by people familiar with the matter.

Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S., Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, according to the court records and people familiar with the matter. Ahmed, a healthcare executive, had donated $190,000 to Paxton, campaign-finance records show, including $25,000 days after he was indicted.

Paxton has run afoul of the law himself more than once, and Lauren McGaughy in the New York Times reported on Friday about the contents of a 2014 deposition:

Mr. Paxton’s recounting of the Servergy transaction began at a Dairy Queen in McKinney. In the deposition, he said he intended to invest $100,000 in Servergy and met Mr. Mapp there to give him a check. Mr. Mapp turned down the money, Mr. Paxton said, and instead gifted him 100,000 shares of stock.

Mr. Paxton attributed Mr. Mapp’s generosity to his religious beliefs.

“I said, Well, who do I make the check out to?” Mr. Paxton told the government lawyers, according to the deposition. “He said, I can’t take your money. God doesn’t want me to take your money.”

The value of the shares eventually grew to $200,000, according to Mr. Mapp’s emails to Mr. Paxton that were described in the deposition.

The government’s lawyers asked why Mr. Mapp, who was actively seeking other investors, would give Mr. Paxton shares for free.

“It was not logical,” Mr. Paxton responded in the deposition, before adding that “Bill is a spiritual person.”

God works in mysterious ways, including, apparently, giving the absolute worst human being in a state party full of despicable characters some wealth as a freebie.