Nov. 1 (UPI) — Former Rep. Liz Cheney on Friday responded forcefully to violent comments made by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggesting she have “nine barrels shooting at her face.”
The former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, arguably Trump’s biggest critic within the GOP, has endorsed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in Tuesday’s election while calling the former president “dangerous.”
Cheney has been a vocal critic of Trump since the 2020 presidential election. She lost her leadership role in the House after voting to impeach him several months after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cheney served as a vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the Capitol riot. She lost her House seat in the 2022 primary to a Trump-backed challenger.
Trump has attacked her repeatedly during this year’s campaign, including last week during an appearance in Novi, Mich., while trying to court votes from the state’s large Muslim-American minority. There he called her “a Muslim-hating warmonger” while linking her to the 2002 invasion of Iraq launched by her father, then-Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush.
He doubled down on his insults and criticisms of Cheney Thursday during an interview with right-wing media commentator Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Ariz., in which he began by denouncing Dick Cheney’s stated intention to join his daughter in voting for Harris.
“I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb,” Trump said.
“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, we’ll, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.”
Those comments brought a strong reaction from both Democrats and some Republicans, who likened them to a death threat by firing squad, while Cheney herself said they evoked the behavior of dictators.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she said Friday in a post on the social platform X. “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,” she added.
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. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala https://t.co/URH5s929Sa— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) November 1, 2024
The Trump campaign defended the remarks, criticizing opponents for taking them “out of context.”
“President Trump is 100% correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves,” Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement issued to media outlets. “This is the continuation of the latest fake media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris.”
But Harris campaign adviser Ian Sams highlighted the rhetoric during an appearance on MSNBC Friday, saying, “Trump is talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad. Vice President Harris is talking about sending one to her Cabinet.”
Meanwhile, former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin urged Republican members of Congress to denounce her ex-boss’ “unpresidential” and “reckless” attacks.
“It’s unconscionable,” she said on CNN. “I don’t know how Republican leaders, many of whom served with Liz Cheney and at one point considered her a colleague and friend, cannot denounce this. It’s dangerous; it’s escalatory.”
