A Trump spokeswoman said the former president was saying that people such as Liz Cheney ‘are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them.’
The Trump and Harris presidential campaigns were battling on Friday morning over remarks made by former President Donald Trump in a recent interview, where he described former Congresswoman Liz Cheney as a “war hawk.”
While speaking to Tucker Carlson on Thursday, Trump said Cheney is 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,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “You know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they are all war hawks when they are sitting in Washington in a nice building.”
In response, Cheney said that Trump’s criticism of her shows that he’s an authoritarian.
The former Republican House lawmaker, who represented Wyoming’s at-large district and has been campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris, wrote on social media platform 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.”
The Harris campaign also seized on the Trump comment by claiming that the former president wanted to send Cheney “to the firing squad.”
“Think about the contrast between these two candidates: You have Trump talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad—and you have VP Harris talking about sending one to her cabinet. This is the difference in this race,” Harris spokesman Ian Sams told MSNBC.
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Friday morning on social media that media outlets and the Harris campaign have taken Trump’s words out of context because he was “clearly explaining“ that people such as Liz Cheney ”are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves.”
Another Trump campaign account said that the former president was talking about how Cheney wanted to send “America’s sons and daughters to fight in wars despite never being in a war herself,” describing the criticism of the former president’s remarks as a hoax.
Cheney and Trump have long been publicly at odds with one another. Their feud took a turn when Cheney was seated on a congressional committee that investigated the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021.
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said earlier this year that she would vote for Harris. The vice president has since deployed her in areas to court voters in certain battleground states.
Cheney’s father released a statement in September saying he would endorse Harris for president. Former President George W. Bush has not publicly endorsed either candidate.
“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” Dick Cheney said in a statement at the time. “That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
With just four days to go before the Nov. 5 election, both campaigns have recently been accusing each other of making disparaging remarks about certain groups and individuals.
Over the past weekend, a roast comedian at a Trump rally in New York City made a joke calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” which the Harris campaign homed in on.
Days later, President Joe Biden said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” during an Oct. 29 conference call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino.
The president and the White House later said that he was speaking about the comedian’s Puerto Rico joke, not Trump’s supporters.
This week, Trump also made a comment about protecting women that was criticized by the Harris campaign.
At a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday, Trump told his supporters that aides had suggested he stop using the term protector because it was “inappropriate,” to which he said he replied: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Another surrogate of the vice president, billionaire Mark Cuban, later courted controversy by saying that the women who are around Trump are weak. He later apologized.
“When I said this during the interview, I didn’t get it out exactly the way I thought I did. So I apologize to anyone who felt slighted or upset by my response. As I said, it wasn’t about trump voters, supporters or employees. Current or former,” Cuban wrote on X early Friday.
The Epoch Times contacted the Trump campaign for additional comment on Friday but did not receive a response by publication time.