‘It’s What Autocrats Do’: Liz Cheney Responds on The View to Trump’s Threatening Rhetoric Against Her

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who became a vocal opponent of former President Donald Trump after the January 6 insurrection, appeared on ABC’s The View on Monday and responded to his threatening language against her.

On Thursday, Trump conducted a campaign event with Tucker Carlson. He criticized Cheney — who has been campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris — for her willingness to go to war despite never having been in combat. (Trump has also never been in combat and dodged the draft during Vietnam.) Trump called Cheney a “radical war hawk” and said: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

While it was not a direct threat, it was still threatening language with a political opponent as a target. Trump later partially walked back his comments. Cheney initially responded on Twitter/X saying: “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.”

On The View, co-host Sunny Hostin asked Cheney about the remarks again, and Cheney responded:

He’s said this nonsense about sort of, you know, “war hawk,” before. But what he did a couple of days ago, he’s never done before, taking the step of saying “nine rifles, shooting her in the face,” and he knows what he’s doing. He knows it’s a threat intended to intimidate. Obviously the intimidation won’t work. But what he’s doing, frankly, is — every day when I’m out there, I’m talking about his lack of fitness. And especially making sure people remember what he did while he watched television as our Capitol was attacked.

For over three hours, he watched police officers be brutally beaten. He was told the vice president had been evacuated. He said, “So what?” People were rushing in, pleading with him, “tell the mob to leave,” and he wouldn’t. And that level of depravity, he knows he has no defense to that. And he knows that the American people will not entrust again with power anyone who would do something that cruel. And so because he can’t respond to that, he tries to change the subject, he tries to threaten. But it’s what autocrats do to try to get their political adversaries to be silent.

Watch the video above via ABC.