NORFOLK, Va. — It was a question Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin did not want to answer.
In an interview on Monday with CNN's Jake Tapper, Youngkin refused to say whether he approved of comments made by former President Donald Trump about using the military to go after "the enemy within."
The comments were made during a FOX News interview a day earlier. Trump, while addressing potential Election Day chaos, said, "I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics."
"I think 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," he added.
Youngkin repeatedly insisted that Trump was referring to illegal immigrants, telling Tapper, "It's all around the fact that we have had an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants come over the border in an unrestrained fashion."
Tapper pushed back several times after playing Trump's video-recorded comments and reading his quotes, "But I'm talking about Donald Trump saying that he wants to use the National Guard and the military to go after the left; that's what he's saying."
Youngkin continued to shift the conversation to the border crisis, even though Trump named Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff as one of the "lunatics."
"Glenn Youngkin knows the idea of jailing your enemies and using the military in that way is incredibly un-American and he's being given an opportunity to kind of say that, to demonstrate a commitment to the American values that used to be a core part of the Republican Party. Instead of doing that, he was taking the easy way out," said Virginia Wesleyan University political science professor Leslie Caughell.
Caughell said other examples of the failure to acknowledge the truth are when Republicans refuse to say that Trump lost the 2020 election or when they try to portray the uprising on January 6, 2021, as something other than an attempt to overthrow the election.
While Trump never seems to pay a price for extreme comments, the political bill for others may come due.
"In the end, people like Governor Youngkin will have to decide when they are thinking about their legacy, whether or not these compromises were worth it, " Caughell said.
13News Now reached out to Governor Youngkin's spokesperson for comment and have not heard back.