Donald Trump escalated his violent rhetoric on Thursday by saying prominent anti-Trump Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney should be executed.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” he said at a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Trump also called Cheney, once the third-ranking Republican in House leadership, “very dumb,” a “stupid person” and “moron.”
Cheney, the former vice chair of the House Jan. 6 select committee, is one of Trump’s most vocal critics.
Cheney, along with her father former Vice President Dick Cheney, have both endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and she has been campaigning with the Democratic presidential nominee in recent weeks.
“I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter’s a very dumb individual, very dumb,” Trump said Thursday of the former VP.
Cheney responded to Trump’s comments in a post on X, saying: “This is how dictators destroy free nations.”
“They threaten those who speak against them with death,” she continued. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Trump’s comments about Cheney are the latest in a series of violent disparaging remarks about his political opponents. He’s previously labeled his opponents “garbage,” “scum,” and has also suggested he would use the military against those who oppose him which he has described as “the enemy within.”
