Donald Trump provokes critic Liz Cheney with violent fantasies

In the final stretch of the US presidential election campaign, Republican Donald Trump is causing a stir by spreading a violent fantasy about one of his biggest critics. At a campaign event in the state of Arizona, Trump spoke about letting his party opponent Liz Cheney look into nine firing “rifle barrels” during a firefight. The Republican presidential candidate argued that Cheney himself is quick to find solutions to conflicts in combat, so he would like to experience it himself with a weapon in combat.

Trump’s Democratic opponent Kamala Harris then described him as unsuitable for the office of president. “He has increased his violent rhetoric,” she told reporters in the state of Wisconsin. “This has to be disqualifying. Anyone who wants to be president of the United States and uses this kind of violent rhetoric is clearly unfit to be president.”

Trump is known for insulting, ridiculing and verbally attacking political opponents. He regularly uses hateful language and is a master of ambiguity in order to deliberately cause confusion – for example, to make statements that glorify violence and to subsequently deny any transgression of boundaries. The statement about Cheney just a few days before the presidential election on Tuesday stands out even by his standards.

What’s more, it comes at a time when there is already great fear that there could be political violence surrounding the election. Trump himself was the victim of an assassination attempt during the election campaign, in which he was slightly injured. The mood in the USA is extremely tense.

Former Republican Congresswoman Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is one of Trump’s toughest critics within the party. Her resistance to the ex-president cost her re-election to the House of Representatives in 2022, as Trump aggressively opposed her during the election campaign and pulled all kinds of strings. Cheney has not let up in her criticism since then, but is now supporting Harris in the election campaign and has appeared with her on several occasions.

During his appearance in Glendale, Arizona, Trump called Cheney a “radical warmonger” and then suggested putting her in a situation where she “stands with a gun while nine barrels of guns fire at her.” Then he continued, “Let’s see how she feels with the guns pointed in her face.” Politicians like them are warmongers when they sit in their nice buildings in Washington and decide to send 10,000 soldiers “into the enemy’s mouth,” Trump continued.

Liz Cheney shared an excerpt from the video on the X platform and wrote: “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death.” Trump called her a “small, vengeful, cruel, unstable man” who wanted to be a tyrant. She also called for Harris to be elected again with the hashtag “#VoteKamala.”

Harris’ campaign team also broadcast an excerpt on X with Trump’s two worst-sounding sentences about Cheney. Trump’s team then accused Harris’ campaign of taking the statement out of context. This is a well-known strategy following provocative statements by the ex-president.

Trump’s comments came during a conversation with right-wing moderator Tucker Carlson. With regard to his political opponents, the Republican once again spoke of the “enemy within” and “enemies of the people.”

After Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July when the bullet grazed his ear, some Republican politicians blamed it on Democratic rhetoric that portrayed him as a threat to democracy. Trump himself regularly deals against his opponents. In Arizona, he said of Harris that she was “stupid as a stone” and described the Democrats as a threat to democracy.

Trump also once again spread the narrative – although now more intensively than before – that an election victory could only be taken away from him through fraud. “The only thing that can stop us is fraud,” said the ex-president. He claimed he was leading in each of the seven battleground states – the so-called swing states that will decide the election. Surveys don’t show this – but overall they indicate a neck-and-neck race. Trump also claimed without any evidence that various fraud attempts had already been uncovered.

Even before the 2020 election, which the then incumbent lost to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump spread such representations relentlessly. After the vote, he claimed that the Democrats had taken his victory away from him through large-scale voter fraud. However, dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign failed in the courts. There was never any evidence of irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the vote. Trump still stuck to his story.

His campaign against the election result culminated on January 6, 2021 when his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, the seat of the US Congress. Earlier that day, Trump had incited his supporters with election fraud claims and, among other things, called on them to march to the Capitol and fight “like hell.”

The Democratic presidential candidate Harris is trying to draw the greatest possible contrast to Trump in the final stretch of the campaign. The ex-president wants to divide Americans, she said at a rally. But she relies on unity: “We have so much more in common.” Regarding Trump’s recent statement that he would protect women “whether women like it or not,” she said the Republican is someone who simply doesn’t respect women’s freedom.