TEMPE, Ariz. – that of Donald Trump His allies tried in vain to persuade him to stop expressing his rage against the “enemies within” in the final days of the campaign. But he continues.

In his meetings and interviews, the former president is increasingly obsessed with the Americans he believes have wronged or betrayed him. They are worse, he says, than America’s foreign adversaries. And he clearly expressed his desire to use power of the federal government, including the military, to pursue them.

“The crazy lunatics that we have — the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people that we have that are actually running the country,” Trump said this month at a rally in Wisconsin. “These people are more dangerous – the enemy within – than Russia, China and other peoples. »

When given the opportunity to hedge, he doubles down.

Fox News’ Howard Kurtz told Trump in an interview last weekend that “enemies within” is “a pretty worrying phrase, if you’re talking about other Americans.”

“I think that’s correct,” Trump responded.

The threat of settling personal grievances from the Oval Office has so alarmed some former Trump aides that they called it fascist. vice-president Kamala HarrisTrump’s Democratic rival, agreed that authoritarian and ultranationalist ideology describes Trump.

“It’s either Donald Trump here, preparing his enemies list, or me, working for you, checking off my bucket list,” Harris said Thursday in Georgia.

Trump’s critics warn that the guardrails that kept him in check — his aides and government officials who ignored potentially illegal orders or steered him away from problematic ideas — won’t be there in a second term.

Some Trump supporters believe his vengeful comments are either justified or hyperbole.

“We already know what kind of president he will be because he’s already served,” Jennifer Warnke, 57, of St. Johns, Ariz., said Thursday before a Trump rally in the Phoenix area. Trump’s joke that he would be a dictator “On the first day” only was a joke intended to emphasize her commitment to border security, she said.

Trump generally defines his enemies nebulously: the radical left, the communists, the deep state, or simply “them.” But sometimes he names them directly. Here’s a look at some of the Americans Trump has sought in recent weeks:

Adam Schiff

Tensions between Trump and Schiff, a Democratic congressman from Los Angeles and a heavy favorite for California’s open Senate seat, date back to his time in the White House.

As the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee during Trump’s presidency, Schiff was a fierce and ever-present critic of Trump’s dealings with foreign leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Schiff also served as the lead impeachment leader, urging senators to remove Trump from office the first time the House impeached him.

“They are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yes, they are, to me, the enemy within,” Trump said on Fox News last weekend. At a rally in California this month, he called Schiff “sleazy.”

Schiff said the outbursts showed the danger of a second Trump presidency.

“We’re seeing a lot of very erratic behavior, which would be OK if it was your crazy grandpa, your crazy old grandpa, but he’s a presidential candidate,” Schiff said on MSNBC .

Trump replaced his capable advisers with “pure sycophants,” Schiff said, and if Trump returns to power, “we will all have to do everything we can to defend our democracy and our institutions.”

Nancy Pelosi

The former House speaker led the House to impeach Trump twice and was an obstacle to his agenda in Congress during his presidency. She has been an outspoken critic, calling him a threat to democracy and once dramatically ripping up the text of his State of the Union address after sitting behind him during the speech.

“I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within,” Trump said in the Fox interview. “She lied. She was supposed to protect the Capitol.

He reiterated the debunked claim that Pelosi assistance refused National Guard troops to protect the Capitol January 6, 2021when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of his 2020 election defeat.

CBS’s “60 Minutes”

Journalists have been a target for Trump since his first campaign, when he called mainstream media “fake news.”

Lately, his anger has been directed particularly at CBS’s “60 Minutes,” TV’s top-rated news show.

Facing criticism for refusing to be interviewed for an election special earlier this month, Trump lashed out at CBS for changing Harris’ answer to a question about Israel. Another CBS show, “Face the Nation,” aired a different part of his response to the same question.

Editing is a common journalistic practice. Trump sits for interviews that are also edited.

But he spent weeks trashing the network at his rallies and on its social media platform, threatening to revoke CBS’ broadcast licenses over what he called “the biggest scandal in the history of broadcasting”.

At a rally Thursday in Arizona, Trump reprized an attack on the media from his 2016 campaign that shocked the political establishment at the time but had not been a regular part of his more recent rhetoric.

“They are the enemies of the people. They are,” Trump said to a jeering crowd. “I was asked not to say that. I don’t want to say it. And one day they will no longer be enemies of the people, I hope.