what did trump say about liz cheney
Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked former Congresswoman Liz Cheney with harsh and sometimes violent-sounding language, most notably in late 2024 when he suggested she should experience having guns or rifles “shooting at her” because he considers her a “radical war hawk.” These comments drew strong backlash and were widely interpreted by critics as a form of incitement or a death threat, which Cheney herself explicitly called out.
Key recent comments
- At an October 31, 2024 event in Arizona with Tucker Carlson, Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and a “radical war hawk.”
- He said, in reference to her foreign policy views, that she always wanted to go to war and that if it were up to her the US would be in “50 different countries.”
- Trump then added that Cheney should be put “with a rifle standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her” to see how she feels when “guns are trained on her face,” language many outlets described as suggesting she be fired upon.
How Cheney and others responded
- Liz Cheney responded on X by likening Trump’s words to a dictator’s death threat, saying this is how dictators destroy free nations by threatening opponents with death.
- Critics, including the Harris campaign and many commentators, condemned the remarks as dangerous violent rhetoric directed at a political opponent.
What Trump’s campaign said
- Trump’s campaign pushed back on media coverage that said he was calling for a “firing squad,” arguing he was “clearly describing a combat zone” and not literally calling for Cheney to be executed or shot.
- They framed his comments as a dramatic way of saying that “war hawks” like Cheney send others to combat despite never having been in war themselves, and that he was contrasting his stance with theirs.
TL;DR: When people ask “what did Trump say about Liz Cheney,” they are usually referring to his late-2024 Arizona remarks where he called her a “radical war hawk” and said she should see how it feels to have rifles or guns “shooting at her” or “trained on her face,” comments that Cheney and many others viewed as a death threat, while Trump’s campaign claimed he was speaking metaphorically about war and combat.
Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.