Trump says Liz Cheney wouldn’t be a ‘war hawk’ if ‘guns are trained on her face’

GLENDALE, Ariz. – At an event on stage dominated by widespread slurs and derogatory attacks against his opponents, former President Donald Trump suggested – just four days after Election Day – that one of his biggest Republican critics would not be such a “war hawk” if she had guns “trained in her face.”

Trump, sitting in a chair next to right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson for what was billed as a live interview event, told an arena of thousands of supporters Thursday that President Joe Biden was a “stupid bastard” and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, was “a sleaze bag.”

He also said he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, “do whatever he wants” in his second administration related to health policy, noting that his newfound political allies “want to look at the vaccines. “

“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said he can do it, Trump said of the former independent presidential candidate. “He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants — everything. I think that’s great,” Trump continued.

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But the former president, no stranger to personal attacks, reserved his most violent comments for former Rep. Liz Cheney. They were the latest example of Trump using violent rhetoric against his perceived enemies.

In a long and uncompromising riff on Cheney, Trump appeared to insinuate that the former congresswoman would be less of a “war hawk” — as Trump referred to her — if she herself was in a war with weapons “trained on her face.”

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” Trump said. “Okay, let’s see how she feels about it. You know when the guns are trained on her face — you know, they’re all hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building,” Trump continued.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Friday: “President Trump made it clear that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go to war themselves .”

In an updated statement later Friday morning, Leavitt said Trump’s remarks were “100% correct” and claimed the backlash over the comments was “the latest fake media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris .”

In the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the US capital, relations between Trump and Cheney frayed. Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have supported Harris over Trump.

“She’s a stupid person,” Trump said Thursday night of the Republican former congresswoman, also calling her “a bad person” and a “very stupid person.” Carlson referred to her as Dick Cheney’s “disgusting little daughter.”

Trump explicitly told the Arizona crowd that he will only lose next Tuesday’s election if there is “cheating” that sets the stage to contest a potential loss.

“Just keep the cheating down,” he said. “The only thing that can stop us is cheating. It is the only thing that can stop us.”

Liz Cheney has recently appeared on the campaign trail with Harris, warning of Trump’s efforts to undermine the will of voters.

Cheney responded to Trump on social media early Friday.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she wrote on X. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot leave our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Women will not be silenced #Vote Kamala.”

Campaign spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement that he blasted Trump’s comments, saying the former president “is so consumed with his grievances, the people that he disagrees with and that he sees as opposing him politically, that he treats as enemies.”

The former Rep. Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, called on fellow Republicans to rebuke Trump over his comments and appealed to voters to reject his “calls for violence and retaliation” in a statement sent to X by her gun prevention organization.

“Declaring that a person should be shot and killed simply for supporting another candidate is un-American,” she said. “Every Republican who claims to respect the Constitution and the rule of law has a responsibility to immediately speak out against Donald Trump’s dangerous comments.”

In other cases, Trump has suggested during the campaign that General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to face the death penalty. He has also called for shoplifters to be shot on sight.

The disparaging comments by Trump about his perceived enemies come as polls show a consistent reluctance among many women to support his candidacy — a gender gap that favors Harris in most polls, nationally, by more than double digits. Women also have premature votes at a significantly higher rate than men so far.

Harris has tried to emphasize this in the closing stages of the race.

She told NBC News in an exclusive interview Thursday that Trump’s remarks this week about protecting women whether they “like it or not” are another sign of how he is “devaluing” women.

Trump delivered the tough remarks in central Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and has the largest population in Arizona. In 2020, voter defections from Trump driven by independents, women and suburban voters led the county to vote against the Republican presidential nominee for the first time in decades, costing Trump Arizona’s 11 electoral votes.

Trump also announced from the stage what would amount to a staggering and consequential proposal: That he would turn to Elon Musk to help massively slash the federal budget, potentially by as much as a third of its current annual spending level. Neither Trump nor Musk has offered any details on what programs or even agencies it would eliminate to meet such a staggering cut.

“He thinks he can save $2 trillion — in which case we won’t have a deficit,” Trump said. “Two trillion dollars a year, by the way!”

After two earlier campaign rallies of the day — in New Mexico and Nevada — Trump wrapped up his final stop late into the night with derogatory name-calling and semi-tangential comments that lasted several minutes.

Before Trump took the stage, Carlson gave a speech about masculinity, mocking second-in-command Doug Emhoff and Gov. Tim Walz, whom he referred to as the “creepy guy who follows (Harris) around on the campaign trail.”

In the final days of his third presidential campaign, Trump has taken to the field without his former GOP rivals, like former Amb. Nikki Haley, Governor Ron DeSantis or Senator Tim Scott. Nor has he met with Georgia’s popular GOP Governor Brian Kemp.

Instead, Trump has chosen to align himself with provocative figures such as Charlie Kirk, who said this week that wives secretly voting for Harris in the election would “undermine their husbands” and Carlson being fired by Fox News.