In a striking escalation of his violent rhetoric against political opponents and other critics, Donald Trump called former representative Liz Cheney a “radical war hawk” and a “moron” who should have guns “trained on her face.” “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said at an Arizona campaign event on Thursday.
Trump’s comments about Cheney—an outspoken “never-Trumper” who has lately campaigned with Kamala Harris—are arguably the most explicit of the various violent threats and insinuations Trump has made on the campaign trail. He has previously promised to deploy the US military against “far-left lunatics” and repeatedly sought to demonize Democratic lawmakers by branding them “the enemy within.” At campaign rallies and on social media, Trump frequently frames the election in militaristic terms: as a “battle,” a form of “retribution” or a war against foreign “invasion.”
Among Democrats and other Trump critics, the former president’s escalating rhetoric has only buttressed claims that Trump, who famously fanned supporters on January 6, 2021 before a mob of insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol, has authoritarian or fascist tendencies—claims that Cheney herself echoed in a post to X on Friday. “This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she wrote. “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.”
According to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released last week, almost half of swing-state voters—45%—believe that Trump will “try to rule as a dictator” if he wins election next week. Confusingly, a similar share of voters said Trump is better prepared to confront threats to democracy. The Harris campaign, for its part, has increasingly sought to cast Trump himself as such a threat and to contrast his hyper-partisan bombast with Harris’s promises to work across the aisle and put a Republican in her Cabinet.
“Think about the contrast between these two candidates,” Harris advisor and spokesperson Ian Sams said on Morning Joe Friday. “You have Donald Trump who is talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad, and you have Vice President Harris talking about sending one to her Cabinet. This is the difference in this race.”
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