Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, refused to allow liberal media talking heads to carry the Democrats' late-election narratives, beating back NBC News' Kristen Welker and CNN's Jake Tapper attempts to pin "threat to democracy" and "enemy within" narratives against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Vance was presented the "enemy within" narrative by Welker spinning Trump's words saying Democrat leadership is a bigger threat to American security and prosperity than foreign enemies.
"What he said, and I do agree with this — what he said is that the biggest threat we have in our country, it's not a foreign adversary, because we can handle these guys," Vance told NBC News' "Meet the Press." "We can handle foreign conflicts.
"We can't handle — look, under Nancy Pelosi's long life in public leadership, the United States has gone from the preeminent industrial power of the world to second, next to China. That fundamentally belongs on Nancy Pelosi's shoulders, and if we're going to have a more prosperous country, we've got to recognize our own leadership is why we lost our industrial base to China.
"Our own leadership is failing to lead this country into peace and prosperity. That's a way bigger threat than any foreign threat. And, yes, it's caused by broken leadership."
Then, in a contentious CNN interview with Tapper, another presidential debate moderator Trump has debated in debates, Vance beat back the continued effort against the Republican ticket again late in this election cycle to use former Gen. John Kelly's Trump animus and the "enemy within" narrative — conflating it with using the U.S. military to keep peace during violent anti-America riots.
"On things that I know that he said, you're impugning things," Vance told CNN's "State of the Union." "You're taking words out of context. You're taking two separate conversations and pretending they were made at the exact same time."
Vance said Tapper was taking Trump's words out of context for political expediency in late October.
"He said that he wanted to use the military to go after far-left lunatics who were rioting," Vance told Tapper in a contentious back and forth. "He also called them the enemy within.
"He separately, in a totally different context and a totally different context, in a totally conversation said that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff were threats to this country."
Tapper interrupted, "Were the enemy within. He said they were the enemy within."
Vance's retort was swift.
"So, every time he uses the exact same phrase, we assumed that he uses the military?" Vance shot back.
"I'm telling you that Donald Trump has said, and I agree with him, that we should use the U.S. military to go after Americans, people who riot, who burned down our cities. We should follow the National Guard."
Ultimately, the liberal media present Trump's positions disingenuously, impacting election integrity, Vance concluded.
"If you'd like to put up a clip and actually put him in context, I think the American people would realize that Donald Trump is a hell of a lot more reasonable than the people like Liz Cheney, who would like to lie us into war," Vance told Tapper. "Now, Jake, we also remember, I mean, step back a little bit. Well, ask yourself a basic question about network integrity. You guys talked about the Russia hoax nonstop."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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