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Donald Trump has lashed out at Liz Cheney, his Republican critic, as a “radical war hawk” who should have “nine barrels shooting at her”, prompting immediate criticism of his “violent rhetoric” from Kamala Harris’s campaign.
The Republican nominee made the comments on Thursday night in Arizona at a campaign event with Tucker Carlson, the firebrand rightwing media host, with just days left before the US election next Tuesday.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
The comments sparked outrage from Harris’s campaign, which said Trump was “going after Liz Cheney with this dangerous, violent rhetoric” and was “talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad”.
Trump allies quickly tried to defuse the furore over his words. “Trump made the valid point that DC warmongers like Cheney think nothing of deploying American troops to war zones, but would have a different perspective if they were the ones put in harm’s way,” Tim Murtaugh, a senior Trump campaign adviser, wrote on X.
Cheney, who is the daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, has endorsed Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, and campaigned with her in the final weeks of the race for the White House.
Liz Cheney emerged as a key figure in the Republican opposition to Trump after co-chairing a congressional committee tasked with probing the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol.
Cheney and her father, the key architect of the Iraq war, are considered representative of the traditional hawkish wing of the Republican party and supportive of US military intervention abroad including military aid to Ukraine.
After losing her seat in the House of Representatives to a pro-Trump rival in her home state of Wyoming, Cheney has continued attacking Trump for being a threat to American democracy, the US Constitution and traditional conservative values.
In response to Trump’s comments in Arizona, she said on X: “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.”
Trump has frequently vowed to seek retribution against the “enemy within” America, stoking fears that he will use the US justice system as a tool to go after his political opponents. But the threat of violence against one of his prominent critics will exacerbate fears that the US will slide into authoritarianism if Trump defeats Harris on Tuesday.
The 2024 presidential campaign has been characterised by violence, including two attempted assassination attempts at Trump, as well as extreme rhetoric.
Republicans criticised US President Joe Biden’s comment earlier this year that Trump should be “in the bullseye”. Trump’s campaign also recently seized on Biden’s apparent description of Maga supporters as “garbage”, while Harris’s camp has highlighted racist comments made at Trump’s recent rally in New York.
Trump’s attack on Cheney comes as Harris is trying to gain ground among conservative voters who are opposed to the Republican nominee and many of whom voted for Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the UN, in the Republican primary earlier this year.