It is no secret that Donald Trump hates former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), a leading critic of the former president who joined nine other Republicans in supporting his second impeachment, served as vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the 2021 Capitol riot, and is now campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris. But contrary to what you may have heard, Trump did not say Cheney “should be fired upon” (as CNN reported), recommend “executing her” (as CNN anchor Sara Sidner claimed), suggest that she “go before a firing squad” (as The Atlantic‘s David Graham averred), or make “a dark and ominous threat” of “death” against her (as The New Republic‘s Hafiz Rashid asserted).
Here is what Trump actually said about Cheney during an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday night: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it—you know, when the guns are trained on her face.” Referring to politicians who are inclined to favor U.S. military interventions, Trump added: “You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.'”
Trump’s remarks about Cheney reflected a standard complaint about armchair interventionists: that they are insulated from the consequences of the wars they support and do not give adequate consideration to the human costs. Although he may have expressed that point in especially vivid terms, he did not argue that Cheney deserved to be shot or killed.
Cheney nevertheless joined other Trump critics in portraying his comments as a death threat. “This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she wrote on X. “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 blatant distortion of Trump’s comments is part of a pattern, and it reflects a broader problem. With four days to go before the presidential election, people who rightly worry about what a second term for Trump could mean might have a chance to persuade on-the-fence voters that his authoritarian instincts, reflected in his frequently expressed desire to punish his political opponents after he regains power, make him unfit for office. But when Trump’s critics try to do that by misrepresenting easily checked facts, they encourage potentially persuadable voters to dismiss the case against him as mendacious fearmongering.
This episode is similar to what happened after Trump, during a Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo a couple of weeks ago, was asked whether he was “expecting chaos on Election Day” if “you win.” Trump said the “National Guard or, if really necessary, the military” could “handle” rioting by “radical left lunatics,” because “they can’t let that happen.” The New York Times inaccurately reported that Trump had “openly suggested turning the military on American citizens simply because they oppose his candidacy,” and other news outlets offered a similar spin.
Although Trump did not say what the Times claimed, he said other things during that interview that were more than a little troubling. “We have two enemies,” he said. “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries, because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily.”
As an example of “the enemy within,” Trump cited Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.), who managed Trump’s first impeachment and is now running for the Senate. “The thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff,” he said. “Think of it. This guy is going to be a senator.” Trump described Schiff as “a total sleazebag” who has “put our country” in “danger.”
Those comments illustrated Trump’s tendency to portray his political opponents as traitors, conflating his enemies with the nation’s. He has similarly called journalists who offend him “enemies of the people” and described Americans who disagree with him as “communists,” “Marxists,” “fascists,” “radical left lunatics,” “sick people,” and “vermin.” All this is bad enough without falsely claiming that Trump told Bartiromo he favors deploying the military against anyone who dares to oppose him.
Trump’s actual threats against Liz Cheney likewise are genuinely alarming, especially because they reflect his general tendency to endorse the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of people who cross him. In March 2023, Trump said the January 6 committee’s members “should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!” A year later, Trump declared that Cheney “should go to jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!”
In June, Trump shared a Truth Social post that said Cheney “is guilty of treason.” The post added, “Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.” Since Trump did “retruth” that message, we can reasonably infer that he thinks Cheney, whom he had already accused of treason, should face a military tribunal. Again, this is bad enough without inaccurately claiming that Trump told Carlson that Cheney should “go before a firing squad.”
The Trump campaign quickly made hay of such false characterizations. “Even Leftists Are Debunking Latest Fake News Hoax,” says the headline above a press release the campaign issued today. It quotes “Never Trumper Joe Walsh,” who noted that “Trump did NOT call for Liz Cheney to be executed”; Vox writer Zack Beauchamp, who likewise observed that “Trump didn’t threaten to execute Liz Cheney” but was instead “calling her a chickenhawk, something liberals said about her for ages”; and Reason contributor Kat Rosenfield, who said journalists are “lying to their audiences” when they equate his criticism of Cheney with recommending her execution.
Even while debunking that misrepresentation, the press release illustrated Trump’s reflexive mislabeling of his critics. Walsh, now a radio talk show host, is a former Republican congressman who was endorsed by the Club for Growth and holds generally conservative views. He is a former Trump supporter who turned against him in 2018. While no one would mistake Beauchamp or Rosenfield for a conservative, that does not make them “leftists.” But as Trump tells it, anyone who opposes him is a “radical left lunatic,” part of “the enemy from within.”
That attitude illustrates Trump’s vindictive demagoguery, which combines narcissism with authoritarianism. It is an important consideration in deciding whether he should again be entrusted with the powers of the presidency. Instead, we are talking about the dishonesty of journalists who distort reality in their desperation to avoid that outcome.
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