AT A GLANCE
- Kamala Harris warned more than a year ago that Donald Trump could turn the military against Americans he labels the “enemy from within.”
- Her remarks are resurfacing after the fatal ICE shooting of U.S. citizen Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
- Trump has since threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act amid protests, drawing sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates.
- Harris says recent events confirm her warning about unchecked executive power and the silencing of dissent.
“Trump Intends to Use the Military Against Americans He Calls ‘The Enemy From Within,” the Former Vice President Warned
As fallout continues from the fatal ICE shooting of U.S. citizen Alex Pretti in Minnesota, a warning delivered more than a year ago by former Vice President Kamala Harris is again drawing national attention. Online, journalists, activists, and political observers are pointing out that the turmoil surrounding Donald Trump’s second term closely mirrors what Harris cautioned voters about during the 2024 campaign.
“She warned us…,” wrote Don Lemon, sharing video from Harris’ Oct. 29, 2024 primetime speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. In that address, Harris argued that a second Trump term would involve an abuse of presidential power and an escalation of force against Americans under the banner of law and order.
“Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him, people he calls, ‘the enemy from within,’” Harris said at the time. She warned voters that Trump was “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power,” arguing that his leadership posed a direct threat to democratic norms.
Those remarks have taken on renewed relevance following the killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, who was shot during a federal immigration operation in Minneapolis. The killing marked the second fatal ICE shooting of a U.S. citizen in Minnesota in recent weeks, intensifying protests and national scrutiny of the administration’s enforcement tactics.
In response to unrest after an earlier fatal shooting of another U.S. citizen, Renee Good, Trump publicly floated invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying the U.S. military to the St. Paul–Minneapolis area. Critics condemned the threat as an unnecessary escalation and a direct challenge to First Amendment protections for peaceful protest.
During her Ellipse speech, Harris rejected Trump’s framing of political opponents as internal enemies. “[He] has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” she said, adding that disagreement is not a threat to the nation but a defining feature of it. “The fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within…they are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”
Following Pretti’s death, Harris released a public statement sharply criticizing the federal response. She described his final moments as an effort to protect his community and accused the federal government of carrying out what she called a “murderous occupation of an American city.”
“I am enraged and heartbroken for Alex, his family, Minneapolis, and America,” Harris said, underscoring what she argues is the human cost of an administration willing to use force against its own citizens.
As Minnesota remains a flashpoint, Harris’ warning—once dismissed by critics as political rhetoric—is now being revisited as a stark preview of the moment the country finds itself in.
