Liz Cheney Says Trump’s Gun-Filled Threat Is ‘How Dictators Destroy Free Nations’

Former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney is condemning comments Donald Trump made about imagining her getting shot at.
During an appearance with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday night, Trump called Cheney a “radical war hawk,” and suggested putting her in a soldier’s place, “with a rifle, standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her.”
He added: “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Cheney responded to Trump’s attack on Friday by noting its authoritarian bent.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she said on X, formerly Twitter. “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.”
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
Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams said that Trump’s suggestion about “sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad” was a clear and stark contrast with his Democratic opponent, who is considering adding a GOP member to her cabinet.
“This is the difference in this race,” he told the Associated Press.
Many of Trump’s former allies and advisers also condemned Trump’s statement, including Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Trump White House director of strategic communication and current panelist on “The View.”
“It’s unconscionable,” Griffin told CNN Friday morning. “I don’t know how Republican leaders, many of whom served with Liz Cheney and at one point considered her a colleague and a friend, cannot denounce this.”
Miles Taylor, former Homeland Security chief of staff, called Trump’s comments “sick” and said on X that “any fellow conservative of conscience should condemn this in the strongest terms.”
But others, such as prominent Trump critic and former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, insisted that the former president did not call for Cheney “to be executed in front of a firing line.”
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Instead, he posted on X that “in Trump’s typically stupid, ugly fashion, he’s trying to make a point about Cheney’s stance on war.”
Trump defended his comments Friday on his Truth Social platform. “It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ‘No thanks!‘’”
But Harris has latched on to the remark as “disqualifying.” On Friday, she described him as “out for revenge” and noted that his “rhetoric has grown more extreme” as the campaign comes to a close.