“President Trump Fantasies About Holding a Gun in Liz Cheney's Face,” Rolling Stone exclaimed.
The Drudge report even more bluntly states, “Mr. Trump is calling for Cheney's execution.”
What exactly did former President Donald Trump say that sparked this media outrage? He suggested that former Rep. Liz Cheney was a warmonger and would collapse if faced with actual combat.
liz and dick
At a campaign event Thursday in Arizona, Tucker Carlson told President Trump that Cheney, a member of a once prominent Republican family, was “running against (him) along with Kamala Harris.” I asked him if he thought it was “strange'' that he was doing so.
President Trump responded, “Actually, I think Kamala was very hurt.'' “(Cheney) is a crazy person.”
He elaborated:
She couldn't stand me because she always wanted to go to war with people. I don't want to go to war… She wanted to stay in Syria, but I withdrew (the troops). She wanted to stay in Iraq, but I took them out. I mean, if it was up to her, we'd go to 50 countries.
In that respect, he said, she is no different from her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who famously engineered the disastrous and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq during the George W. Bush administration.
Then he made a statement that shocked the media.
(Liz Cheney) Radical war hawk. Give her a rifle and stand there so the nine barrels fire at her. Let's see how she feels about it when a gun is pointed at her face.
perfectly executed smear
Immediately the smear machine was activated.
“President Trump says 'war hawk' Liz Cheney should be fired after escalating violent rhetoric against opponents,” CNN trumpeted. The network linked President Trump's words to his “long history of violent rhetoric.”
Rolling Stone magazine claimed that Trump's comments were an example of his “increasingly fascist rhetoric.”
The New York Times, in an article headlined “Trump attacks Liz Cheney, imagines 'she's being shot',” said, “Trump attacks Liz Cheney, imagines 'she's being shot.'” “The use of increasingly threatening language at times has given rise to these violent theories.” ”
Many news outlets, including ABC News, The Washington Post, and The Independent, also jumped on the bandwagon that President Trump wanted to kill President Cheney.
Harris said Friday that Trump's comments “must be disqualifying.” At the same time, she praised Cheney as “a true patriot who showed extraordinary courage in putting country above party.”
Cheney expressed his anger at X as follows:
This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten with death anyone who speaks against them. We cannot entrust our country and our freedoms to a narrow-minded, vindictive, cruel and unstable man who seeks to become a tyrant.
What about “dark and sometimes threatening language”?
chicken hawk cheney
Even a brief consideration of his partial quote should make it clear that the former president did not call for Cheney's assassination. In fact, Trump went on to clarify what he meant.
You know, when they're sitting in a nice building in Washington and saying, “Hey, let's put 10,000 troops into the enemy's mouth,'' they're all war hawks.
The implication is unmistakably that it is easy to call for war when there is no need to go to war. Liz Cheney, of course, never served in a war. Dick Cheney received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War. Putting one side in a combat zone would make them less eager to involve the United States in foreign wars.
President Trump acknowledged this understanding in a post on Friday Truth Social.
All I have to say about Liz Cheney is that she is a war hawk and stupid at that, but she doesn't have the “courage” to fight herself. It's easy for her to talk while sitting away from where the death scene takes place, but if you put a gun in her hand and let her go to the fight, she'll say, “No thanks.” Her father destroyed the Middle East and other parts of the world and gained wealth from doing so. He's caused a lot of death before, but probably never even thought about it. That's not how we want to run the country!
civil war monger
That's certainly not how Democrats wanted to run the country 10 years ago, when Salon published an article about “Dick Cheney's dark legacy.”
But today, the Cheneys are enthusiastic supporters of the Harris campaign, making them a welcome presence among progressives. Even in that incarnation of progressivism, New Yorkers praised Liz Cheney at last week's annual festival.
The Daily Caller summed up the situation aptly:
This whole fake debacle perfectly sums up America's modern establishment. Our political leaders are allowed to invade countries and leave U.S. troops dead with impunity, but they never have to fight themselves. The established liberal media is demonizing this man who exposes the dark underbelly of the whole affair, while hyping up pro-war figures like (Liz) Cheney.
Everyone in the media knows that politicians who advocate war are complete cowards who would never set foot in a combat zone. But they are too blinded by hatred for Trump and too loyal to their own class to hold politicians accountable. In their minds, as long as you behave civilly at home, you are a hero for starting a war that leads to the deaths of millions of innocent civilians. If you speak the truth in an uncouth manner, you are the bad guy.
