Trump suggests training guns on Liz Cheney’s face

Less than a week before Election Day, Donald Trump last night called for one of his prominent political opponents to go ahead with a firing ballot. In an on-stage interview with Tucker Carlson in Arizona, Trump called Liz Cheney, the Republican former representative from Wyoming, “a very stupid individual” and “a radical war hawk.”

“You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying: Well, let’s send 10,000 soldiers right into the enemy’s mouth.” Trump said. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Like Trump’s hateful rally at Madison Square Garden last weekend, these comments are a good summary of what he would bring to the White House if re-elected. His campaign is based on violence, disregard for the rule of law and retaliation against anyone who might disagree with him.

David A. Graham: This is Trump’s message

“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” Cheney responded to 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.”

Trump’s campaign said that Trump “talked about how Liz Cheney wants to send America’s sons and daughters to fight in wars, even though she has never been to war herself.” Trump is not wrong that Cheney has often advocated foreign military interventions. She can and should be criticized for many of her views. But Trump is not calling for a debate. He vividly imagined Cheney with “guns trained on her face.” Normalizing the discussion of political opponents being shot is a step in a dangerous direction.

Those remarks cannot be written off as a joke, the excuse Trump has typically used when he has crossed lines. (He seems less worried about disapproval these days.) Trump wasn’t laughing when he said that. Neither did Carlson or the audience. In addition, Trump has repeatedly called for the armed forces to be used against his political critics. He has proposed deploying the military against “enemies from within,” a group that includes “radical left lunatics” in general, but also former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam Schiff, both California Democrats. He is reinforced calls for Truth Social for former President Barack Obama to face a military tribunal (for what crimes one can only guess). He has said that retired General Mark Milley, whom he named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed.

Anne Applebaum: Trump wants you to accept all of this as normal

Still, some voters may go to the polls without a firm grasp of his rhetorical record. Trump makes so many outrageous remarks that it’s hard to keep track of them all, and some sections of the press continue to downplay even his most dangerous comments. The heading i New York Times on Trump’s Cheney remarks as of this writing were “Trump attacks Liz Cheney using violent war imagery“, which is not strictly false, but misses the point.

In these comments, Trump openly showed his hypocrisy. Although the former president has recast himself as a supposed dove, he once supported some of the same conflicts that Cheney did, including the war in Iraq. And although he claims he wants to avoid foreign adventurism, he spent his first term in office being talked out of attacking Venezuela, North Koreaand Syria’s Bashar al-Assadamong other things. He and his allies are now proposing that the US military launch attacks on cartels inside Mexico.

David A. Graham: Trump is not bluffing

Trump is also proposing new uses of the military domestically, not just against his enemies, but to carry out mass deportation. He has encouraged brutal policing and civilian attacks. Trump may hate war, but he loves violence.

Maybe the voters shouldn’t put this man in command of so many people armed with rifles.