Liz Cheney responds to Trump’s threatening ‘gun’ rhetoric

Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who became an outspoken opponent of the former president Donald Trump after the January 6 uprising, appeared on ABC’s The view Monday and responded to his threatening language toward her.

On Thursday, Trump held a campaign event with Tucker Carlson. He criticized Cheney, who has been campaigning for the vice presidency Kamala Harris – for her willingness to go to war, despite never having been in combat. (Trump also never took part in combat and dodged the draft during Vietnam.) Trump called Cheney a “radical war hawk” and said, “Let’s put her there with a gun while nine barrels shoot at her. Okay. Let’s see what she thinks about it. You know, when the guns are pointed at her face.”

While not a direct threat, it was still threatening language targeting a political opponent. Trump later partially walked back his comments. Cheney initially responded Twitter/X saying, “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak out against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vengeful, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

On The viewco-host Sunny Hostin asked Cheney again about the comments, and Cheney responded:

He’s said this shit before about some sort of, you know, “war hawk.” But what he did a few days ago is something he has never done before. He took the step of saying ‘nine guns, shoot her in the face’, and he knows what he’s doing. He knows it’s a threat meant to intimidate. It is clear that the intimidation will not work. But honestly what he does is, every day I’m there, I talk about his lack of fitness. And especially to make sure people remember what he did while watching television when our Capitol was under attack.

For more than three hours he watched police officers being brutally beaten. He was told the vice president had been evacuated. He said, “And then?” People rushed in and begged him, “Tell the crowd to leave,” but he didn’t. And against that level of depravity he knows he has no defense. And he knows that the American people will not trust anyone again to power who would do something so cruel. And because he can’t respond to that, he tries to change the subject, he tries to threaten. But it is what autocrats do to silence their political opponents.

Watch the video above via ABC.

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