Former President Donald Trump’s recent suggestion to use the military to combat domestic political opponents the Republican referred to as “the enemy within” drew strong condemnation this week from Colorado veterans who support Vice President Kamala Harris, including the only member of the state’s congressional delegation who has served in uniform.

U.S. Rep Jason Crow, an Aurora Democrat and Army Ranger combat veteran, compared Trump’s remarks to the Republican’s efforts to block certification of President Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Donald Trump encouraged a mob to overturn an election and now he wants to turn the military against American citizens. We’ve seen this before,” Crow said in a statement distributed by the Harris campaign. “We can’t let Trump anywhere near the White House.”

Daniel Coleman, an Army veteran and former Republican who lives in Colorado Springs, said, “The military is not a weapon to be used against our fellow Americans, and any suggestion otherwise is a direct threat to the democracy we have all sworn to protect.” 

“Donald Trump’s reckless comments about using the military against his own people are not only un-American, but also disqualify him from any position of leadership,” Coleman added.

Trump discussed possibly deploying the military against “radical left lunatics” in an interview Sunday on Fox News, calling his opponents “more dangerous” than foreign adversaries Russia and China.

Asked by Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo if he is concerned about “chaos on Election Day,” possibly from foreign nationals or immigrants, Trump responded that he thought “the bigger problem is the the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and are destroying our country.”

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within,” Trump continued. “We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Trump has taken lately to describing his critics as “the enemy from within” in speeches, including one he delivered the day before the Bartiromo interview, at an Oct. 12 rally in southern California, when he used the phrase to describe U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and frequent Trump critic who is running for the U.S. Senate.

At a town hall by Fox News on Wednesday, Trump stood by the message, calling Schiff and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “so evil” but denying that he was “threatening anybody.”

Coleman, the Army veteran, told Colorado Politics that he left the Republican Party in 2013 when one of his high school classmates was killed in combat in Afghanistan, but there was no money allocated for his family to bury him during the federal government shutdown led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Coleman said Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, put together a coalition to close the loophole for future shutdowns after GOP members of Congress had refused to address the situation.

Coleman said he considered Trump’s recent remarks “deeply unconscionable” but was encouraged to see a bipartisan coalition speaking out against the former president.

“The idea that, because people want democracy to function, that they’re worse than China or Russia, it’s lunacy,” Coleman said in an interview. “Just because there are people who think that tax policy should function differently than I do, that doesn’t make those people my enemies, it makes those people my fellow Americans, that I need to work together with.”

Other Colorado veterans made similar comments in a release from the Harris campaign.

“Former President Trump is telling us exactly what he plans to do by calling to use military force on the ‘enemy from within,'” said Adam Gillard, an Air Force veteran and Air Force Academy graduate. “As veterans, we swore an oath to protect this country and defend the Constitution — not to enable the whims of a wannabe dictator.”

Dick Wilkinson, a retired Army warrant officer, said Trump has made clear he values personal loyalty more than he values loyalty to the country or the constitution.

“Donald Trump has been the president once before and still does not understand the limits of authority and the appropriate use of military forces,” Wilkinson said.

“The United States military exists to defend our nation, win its wars, and assist civil authorities in times of disaster,” said Jordan Damron, an Army veteran. “It serves to protect and safeguard all Americans — regardless of race, creed, or political beliefs. When Donald Trump suggests otherwise, he undermines the very values our service members risk their lives to uphold.”

Added Damron: “This comment, along with his extreme agenda to overhaul the Department of Justice and prosecute people he disagrees with, prove that Trump is completely unfit to lead our military. To suggest otherwise undermines the very values our service members risk their lives to uphold.”

Responding to Trump’s remarks Thursday at a rally in Pennsylvania, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican’s running mate, said Trump was talking about “coming down hard” on rioters, not about using the military to quash political dissent, the Pennsylvania Capital Star reported.

“Oh, of course not,” Vance said, adding that “we’ve also got to have law and order in our own country too, because this is an important issue.”

In a widely shared, sometimes heated interview with CNN host Jake Tapper on Monday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he “didn’t believe” Trump was talking about using the military against political foes but was instead was referring to dangerous immigrants.

The Trump campaign suggested to ABC News in a statement that Trump’s remarks were related to immigration, despite the former president making clear multiple times that he wasn’t referring to immigrants.

In response to a question about Trump’s “enemy from within” remarks, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told the news network: “The Harris-Biden administration has unconscionably abused our refugee and asylum systems, and turned them into programs to import mass numbers of unvetted migrants from the most dangerous countries on earth, at the expense of Christians and other persecuted religious minorities who those programs were intended to help.”