Trump says 'war hawk' Liz Cheney should be fired upon in escalation of violent rhetoric against his opponents

[pnwmom]

Source: CNN

Donald Trump said former Rep. Liz Cheney is a "war hawk" who should be fired upon, as he raged against one of his most prominent intra-party critics while campaigning Thursday night in Arizona.

"She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?" the former president said at a campaign event in Glendale with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. "Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face."

Trump also hurled insults at Cheney, once the third-ranking Republican in House leadership, calling her "very dumb," a "stupid person" and "the moron."

Trump's suggestion that Cheney be fired upon represents an escalation of the violent language he has used to target his political foes. And it comes days before an election in which the former president -- who never accepted his 2020 loss -- has already undermined public confidence. In recent weeks, he has also suggested a military crackdown on political opponents he has described as "the enemy within."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/politics/donald-trump-liz-cheney-war-hawk-battle/index.html

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And from the NYTimes:

Mr. Trump's violent hypothetical came as he has recently intensified the dark and at times threatening language he uses toward his political opponents. The former president, whose lie that he won the 2020 election spurred some of his supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, once again on Thursday referred to a pernicious "enemy within" that needed to be addressed. He has previously described his enemies as "vermin" that needed to be rooted out. (Ms. Cheney was the top Republican on the House committee that investigated Mr. Trump's role in the Capitol riot.)

His language reflects the charged environment surrounding this year's election. Democrats and some Republicans have increasingly warned that Mr. Trump exhibits authoritarian tendencies, with Ms. Harris recently calling him a "fascist." Mr. Trump and his allies have argued that such language has fueled an overheated political climate that they argue has led to political violence, ignoring that Mr. Trump has long used similar language to describe Democrats.

Throughout Thursday night's interview, Mr. Trump's third event of the day, he gave a series of rambling answers in which he flung personal insults at his critics, at one point relived his 2016 presidential campaign and used dark language to make exaggerated claims about immigration.

. . . .“If Ronald Reagan came back from the dead — at the height of Ronald Reagan, if he went to California to have a rally, he would have 250, 300 people in a ballroom some place,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “We have fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred thousand people.” .

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/trump-liz-cheney-tucker-carlson.html