Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney is firing back at Donald Trump after the former president darkly suggested putting Cheney in the firing line, criticizing him as a “war hawk.”
“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten death to those who speak out against them,” Cheney posted on X on Friday. “We cannot leave our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel and unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Trump attacked Cheney Thursday night at an event with Tucker Carlson in battleground Arizona.
“He’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said of the former Wyoming congressman as he went after him and his father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
“Let’s just stand there with a rifle and shoot nine guns, okay?” said Trump. “Let’s see how he feels about it, you know, when he puts guns in his face.”
Trump continued: “You know, everybody’s war-mongering when they’re sitting in a nice building in Washington saying, ‘Oh, well, let’s send 10,000 troops into the mouth of the enemy.'”
Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Cumming, Georgia, on Oct. 15, 2024, and former Rep. Liz Cheney in Malvern, Pa., on Oct. 21, 2024.
Elijah Nouvelagebrendan Smialows/AFP via Getty Images
The Harris campaign called Trump’s “nine barrels” a reference to a “shooter” rather than the traditional “nine guns.”
Cheney, a Republican but a staunch critic of Trump after the 2020 election and for his conduct on January 6, 2021, has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
While campaigning alongside Harris, Cheney called Trump a danger to democracy and the Constitution.
“We see it every day, somebody who was willing to use violence to try to take power, to stay in power, which represents, frankly, an irreparable disaster, in my opinion, and we have to do everything we can to make sure he’s not re-elected,” Cheney told ABC. News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” earlier this fall after publicly defending Harris.
Trump’s statements against Cheney are the latest in a series getting darker and darker and violent campaign rhetoric.
The former president doubled down on his “enemy from within” language after it previously suggested Democrats are more of a threat to the US than major foreign enemies like China and Russia when it comes to the 2024 election.
“We have an enemy from within,” he told Carlson on Thursday. “We have very bad people, and these people are also very dangerous. They would like to destroy our country. They would like our country to be a nice communist or fascist country as they can. And we have to be careful.”
Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives for a live interview with Tucker Carlson during the finale of the Tucker Carlson Live Tour at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona on October 31, 2024.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Harris campaign senior adviser Ian Sams responded to Trump’s comments during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, calling the former president “completely consumed by his grievances.”
“I mean, think about the contrast between those two candidates,” Sams said. “You have Donald Trump talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad, and you have Vice President Harris sending him to his cabinet. This is the difference in this race.”
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Friday that Trump’s words were being taken out of context.
“President Trump was making it clear that warmongers like Liz Cheney are too quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them instead of fighting them themselves,” Leavitt wrote in X.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim, Kelsey Walsh and Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.
