With about three weeks left before Election Day, former President Donald Trump is pushing to the forefront of his campaign a menacing political threat: that he would use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him.

In a Fox News interview Sunday, Trump framed Democrats as a pernicious “enemy from within” that would cause chaos on Election Day that he speculated the National Guard might need to handle.

A day later, he closed his remarks to a crowd at what was billed as a town hall in Pennsylvania with a stark message about his political opponents.

“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”

And on Tuesday, he once again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power when pressed by an interviewer at an economic forum in Chicago.

With early voting underway in key battleground states, the race for the White House is moving toward Election Day in an extraordinary and sobering fashion. Trump has long flirted with, if not openly endorsed, anti-democratic tendencies with his continued refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, embrace of conspiracy theories of large-scale voter fraud and accusations that the justice system is being weaponized against him. He has praised leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for being authoritarian strongmen.

But never before has a presidential nominee — let alone a former president — openly suggested turning the military on U.S. citizens simply because they oppose his candidacy. As he escalates his threats of political retribution, Trump is offering voters the choice of a different, and far less democratic, form of American government.

“There is not a case in American history where a presidential candidate has run for office on a promise that they would exact retribution against anyone they perceive as not supporting them in the campaign,” said Ian Bassin, a former associate White House counsel under President Barack Obama who leads the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “It’s so fundamentally, outrageously beyond the pale of how this country has worked that it’s hard to articulate how insane it is.”

As they move into what will be their closing arguments to voters, Trump and Harris are devoting most of their attention to wrangling over the issues that remain voters’ top priorities — the economy, abortion rights, housing costs and U.S. engagement in the wars roiling Ukraine and the Middle East. The race remains tight, with views about Trump deeply cemented for most voters.

But the Harris campaign sees fresh opportunities in Trump’s latest attacks on democratic principles, particularly among moderate Republicans and independents who disapprove of the his character and polarizing style.

As Trump spoke Monday night, Harris stood in a stadium at the opposite end of Pennsylvania where she took the unusual step of playing a video montage of Trump vowing to go after those who oppose him.

“He’s talking about, he considers anyone who doesn’t support him or will not bend to his will an enemy of our country,” she told several thousand supporters at a rally in Erie. “He is saying that he would use the military to go after them.”

Harris’ aides believe voters are still not familiar with Trump’s statements, nor do they fully understand the stakes for U.S. democracy. The campaign plans to integrate the video of Trump’s remarks — which it quickly turned into a television ad — into future rallies. Harris told aides that using the video footage to make her case against Trump reminded her of presenting evidence at trial.

But there are signs that voters and even some elected officials do not believe that Trump will make good on his most alarming threats.

When Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, was asked about Trump’s “enemy within” remarks during an interview with the CNN host Jake Tapper on Monday, he argued that the former president was referring to immigrants who entered the country illegally.

After being asked about Trump’s suggestion of turning the military against Americans, Youngkin replied that the network was “misinterpreting and misrepresenting his thoughts.”

“I’m literally reading his quotes to you,” Tapper replied.