ARIZONA — Donald Trump on Friday night attacked former Rep. Liz Cheney as a “war hawk” and suggested she should have guns pointed at her, ramping up his dark and violent rhetoric with just four days to go until Election Day.
Trump, at an event in battleground state Arizona, told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Cheney might not be as willing to send troops to fight in war if she had guns pointed at her.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Cheney has opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has become a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris over the last month of the campaign.
Trump called Cheney “a very dumb individual” and “a deranged person” before he went on.
“But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries,” he said.
Over the course of the event, Trump attacked President Joe Biden as a “stupid bastard” and called Harris “a sleaze bag.”
Trump’s suggestion that Cheney be fired upon was quickly viewed as a threat and with just four days to go until Election Day, his violent language he has used to target his political foes is ramping up.
The comment comes as Trump continues to make false claims and outright lies about voter fraud in the key state of Pennsylvania and has repeatedly made comments about using the military on political opponents he has described as “the enemy within.”
He also said that he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known conspiracy theorist, “do anything he wants” in his second administration related to healthcare.
“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said, he can do it,” Trump said. “He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants — everything. I think it’s great.”
