fifth column

The interview is "really quite sad," Clinton continued, because it's a sign that some Americans at this moment "are like a fifth column from Vladimir Putin."

They have also adopted the former president's conspiratorial rhetoric about the federal bureaucracy and civil service, which is now depicted as a national fifth column.

The decree “deals a final blow to the fifth column within the country,” he added.

“This is a fifth column!” he wrote on social media, without naming names.

To vitalize a fifth column, they would create a large network of Nazi sympathizers working against the United States from within the United States.