Trump
Reuters
As if former president Donald Trump suggesting he would deploy the military against Americans who won’t vote for him, or responding to a female heckler at a rally in California by saying she would get “the hell knocked out of her”, wasn’t concerning enough, the Republican presidential candidate has now discussed a fantasy scenario where Liz Cheney is shot by multiple people.
Speaking to ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson at an event in Glendale, Arizona on Thursday, Trump branded Ms Cheney – the daughter of Dick Cheney, the former Republican vice president who has come out in support of Trump’s rival Kamala Harris – a “very dumb individual” and a “radical war hawk”.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.
Yes, he really did fantasise about a woman being shot at.
Needless to say, the comments have been condemned as “f*****-up”, “sick” and “grotesque” by social media users, with others pointing out how different the reaction would have been had current president Joe Biden or an average American citizen – said something similar:
Ms Cheney, a former representative for Wyoming and ex-vice chairman of the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, appeared alongside Harris in the city of Ripon last month to warn America “faces a threat unlike any we have faced before” in Donald Trump and that “putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration” but rather “our duty”.
She said: “Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our capitol to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself.
“I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, that is depravity, and we must never become numb to it.
“Any person who would do these things can never be trusted with power again.”
Ms Cheney added: “He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel, and … is not fit to lead this good and great nation.”
The former politician has since responded to Trump’s latest remarks on Twitter/X, writing that the comments are an example of “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,” she said, accompanying her post with the hashtags ‘#WomenWillNotBeSilenced’ and #VoteKamala’.
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