Shots fired at critic? Trump provokes with violent fantasy about Liz Cheney

Liz Cheney is a thorn in Donald Trump's side as a critic from within his own ranks. He calls her a "warmonger" - and imagines her in a fierce battle with many armed opponents.

DPA

01.11.2024, 19:01

dpa

Donald Trump has spoken about making his intra-party critic Liz Cheney look down nine firing "gun barrels" during a gun battle. The Republican presidential candidate argued at a campaign event that Cheney herself is quick to seek the solution to conflicts in combat, so he would like to see her with a gun in a battle.

Fear of rampant attackDonald Trump and the "enemies within"

The statement, made just a few days before Tuesday's presidential election, represented an escalation of rhetoric against his political opponents, even by Trump's standards. Ex-Congresswoman Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is one of the best-known Republicans supporting Trump's Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.

"When her guns are pointed in her court."

Trump called Cheney a "radical warmonger" and then suggested putting her in a situation where she "stands there with one gun while nine barrels of guns are firing at her." He then continued, "Let's see how she feels about that with guns pointed in her face." Politicians like her are warmongers when they sit in their nice buildings in Washington and decide to send 10,000 soldiers "into the enemy's mouth", Trump continued.

Liz Cheney shared a clip of the video on the online platform X and wrote: "This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death." Trump called her a "small, vindictive, cruel, unstable man" who wants to be a tyrant. With the hashtag "#VoteKamala", she also called on people to vote for Kamala Harris.

Harris' campaign team quickly circulated a clip on X of Trump's two worst-sounding sentences about Cheney. Trump's team then accused Harris' campaign of taking the statement out of context.

In conversation with Tucker Carlson

Trump's comments were made in a conversation with right-wing TV presenter Tucker Carlson in the contested state of Arizona. Referring to his political opponents, he once again spoke of the "enemy within" and "enemies of the people".

After Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in July - the bullet grazed his ear - some Republican politicians blamed the rhetoric of the Democrats, who portrayed him as a threat to democracy. He himself regularly lashes out at his opponents. During his appearance in Arizona, he said of Harris that she was "dumb as a rock" and described the Democrats as a danger to democracy.