The ludicrous hoax claiming that former President Donald Trump called for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to be executed is already collapsing.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, the left, and legacy media have seized on a remark Trump made to Tucker Carlson Thursday night, where he contended Cheney is keen to send American troops to the front lines of battle without appreciation for the danger they face.
After spending seven minutes detailing American would-be warring “in 50 different countries” if it were up to Liz Cheney and recounting the warhawk attitudes of her father, Vice President Dick Cheney, Trump, who is vehemently anti-war, wondered how keen Liz Cheney would be on going to war if she were the one heading to the front lines:
[Dick Cheney’s] daughter’s a very dumb individual, very dumb. She’s a radical Warhawk. 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. You know, they’re all Warhawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, “Aw gee, well, let’s send ten thousand troops into the mouth of the enemy.” But she’s a stupid person.
After distorting his words, including with the contention from the Harris campaign that Trump wants Cheney put before a “firing squad,” out of full context, the campaign and establishment media outlets are getting called out.
Zach Beauchamp, a senior correspondent for left-leaning Vox, blasted the spin unfolding Friday.
“Folks, Trump didn’t threaten to execute Liz Cheney. He actually was calling her a chickenhawk, something liberals said about her for ages,” he wrote.
“Look at the context — Trump is talking about giving her a weapon. Typically, people put in front of firing squads aren’t armed,” he added.
Ian Bremmer, a political scientist who is president of the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, slammed Drudge Report for its “extraordinary irresponsibility.”
The aggregation website ran the false front page headline, “Trump Calls for Cheney’s Execution.”
“[N]o, he did not,” Bremmer wrote in a tweet sharing an image of the headline. “[T]his is extraordinary irresponsibility, made worse only by the fact that it’s increasingly common across the political spectrum in the united states [sic].”
Conservative influencers and officials were quick to debunk the false narrative as well.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) emphasized, “Trump explained that Liz Cheney is a radical War Hawk who never served in our military & doesn’t understand the devastating cost of war.”
“Democrats & media are taking this out of context AGAIN & using it to slander President Trump,” he added.
Donalds added that the left sees the GOP’s momentum and said, “Don’t fall for this hoax.”
Commentator Colin Rugg blasted CNN Friday morning for launching “a full scale disinformation campaign to confuse voters just four days before the presidential election.”
“The network is deceptively editing a comment Trump made during a campaign event in Arizona about Liz Cheney,” he added.
“The context is being completely ignored by the media who now claims that Trump wants to execute Cheney,” he wrote, predicting the “tactic will likely be replicated in the coming days.”
Journalist Jack Posobiec also debunked the lie.
“Trump is talking about Liz Cheney’s stance on war,” Posobiec wrote. “He is discussing how elites will send our kids to war but never do themselves.”
The popular social media account @LibsofTikTok blasted media outlets for the hoax.
“Trump did not call for her to be killed. The media know this and are purposely misleading their readers and leaving out the context,” @LibsofTikTok tweeted.