Prominent Republican and vocal Donald Trump critic Liz Cheney called the former president a “vindictive, cruel” dictator on Friday after he suggested she would be less of a “war hawk” with guns trained on her face.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death,” the former US congresswoman and daughter of ex-vice president Dick Cheney said Friday in a post on social platform X.
“We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Trump — who is running for reelection — made the remarks as he criticized Cheney’s father for endorsing Democratic White House candidate Kamala Harris, speaking during a fireside chat with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in Arizona.
“And I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb,” Trump said Thursday.
“She’s a radical war hawk. 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.”
The backlash was swift, with Harris campaign advisor Ian Sams contrasting Trump “talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad” with Harris “talking about sending one to her cabinet.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, a top aide in Trump’s White House, called his comments “unconscionable.”
“I don’t know how Republican leaders — many of whom served with Liz Cheney and at one point considered her a colleague and friend — cannot denounce this. It’s dangerous. It’s escalatory,” she told CNN.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman called Cheney a “warmonger” in a statement to AFP, adding that the Republican meant that she is “very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves.”
Cheney was once seen as rising star among the Republicans in the House of Representatives but was booted from a leadership position and then lost her Wyoming seat over her strong criticism of Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in the 2020 election.
The ex-president endorsed her opponent in the 2022 House primary, Harriet Hageman.
Cheney — who led the successful effort to have Trump impeached for a second time — announced last month that she would be voting for Harris and has appeared with the vice president multiple times to woo soft conservatives.
Trump has a long history of attacking Cheney and as recently as last week called her a “Muslim-hating warmonger… who wants to invade practically every Muslim country on the planet.”