Donald Trump, escalating the violent language he’s been using to target his political opponents, suggested guns be turned on former representative Liz Cheney, one of his more prominent intra-party critics.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” the former president said in a conversation with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a campaign event in Arizona Thursday night.
“Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Carlson had asked Trump whether it is strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former Wyoming congresswoman has been, perhaps, one of the most vocally opposed Republicans to another Trump presidency and has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris.
Trump labelled Cheney “a deranged person,” and hurled other insults at her, calling her “very dumb,” a “stupid person” and “the moron.”
She responded to Trump’s comments overnight, writing on X: “This is how dictators destroy free nations.”
“They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Earlier, after Harris’ campaign and other Trump critics on social media pounced on his comment, Trump’s campaign said he “was talking about how Liz Cheney wants to send America’s sons and daughters to fight in wars despite never being in a war herself.”
In another statement, his campaign said Trump “was clearly describing a combat zone.”
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Trump has repeatedly vowed to investigate or prosecute his political rivals, including Cheney, as well as election workers, journalists and left-wing Americans, among others, and has said the military could be used against what he calls “radical left lunatics” if there is unrest on Election Day.
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Trump also attacked Cheney last week in Michigan, The Hill reports, invoking her father and former vice-president Dick Cheney’s support for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
“Kamala is campaigning with Muslim-hating warmonger, Liz Cheney, who wants to invade practically every Muslim country on the planet,” Trump said at the time in Novi, Mich. “And let me tell you the Muslims of our country, they see it, and they know it.
“Her father was responsible for invading the Middle East, killing millions of Arabs — millions — and this is the one that Kamala is campaigning with.”
Trump’s use of violent language is nothing new. As CNN notes, during his first presidential campaign in 2015 and 2016, he suggested a heckler deserved to be “roughed up” and he said he’d like to punch another in the face.
Harris criticized his threats of violence and rhetoric, speaking this week from the Ellipse in Washington, where Trump delivered his Jan. 6, 2021 speech on the day of the Capitol riot.
“Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him. People he calls ‘the enemy from within.’ This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” Harris said in her Tuesday night remarks. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
As the days dwindle ahead of next week’s election, the Trump campaign has come under fire for what many are calling increasingly racist, violent and sexist rhetoric delivered from rally stages and on social media.
Earlier this week, the former president declared he is “not a Nazi,” denying accusations of authoritarianism after former White House chief of staff John Kelly said in interviews that Trump, while president, expressed admiration for the loyalty of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals.
The Trump campaign has also been dealing with the fallout from a rally at Madison Square Garden last weekend, where numerous speakers and guests spewed racist and crude rhetoric to Republican supporters.
Trump was also taken to task for remarks he made Wednesday about protecting women whether they “like it or not.”
Speaking on stage Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wis., he told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”
He said he then told those aides, “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Trump also went on the offensive Thursday, filing a lawsuit against CBS, demanding US$10 billion in damages over the network’s 60 Minutes interview with Harris, claiming the interview and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election in her favour.
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” the filing continued.
A spokesperson for CBS told CNN Trump’s claims against the show are false and “without merit” and the lawsuit was slammed by First Amendment lawyers as “dangerous and frivolous.”
“The First Amendment leaves it to journalists — and not the courts, the government or candidates for office — to decide how to report the news,” First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin told CNN.
The Trump campaign also announced Friday they had filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against The Washington Post for “illegal in-kind contributions to Harris for President.”
“According to reports, the Post is using its advertising powers to promote pro-Kamala and anti-Trump coverage to voters in the final days of the election. While they declined to endorse her publicly, they have endorsed her in the dark; so much for ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,'” a press release from the campaign stated, but did not elaborate further.
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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