Cheney: Trump firing-squad threats are ‘how dictators destroy free nations’

Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney warned on Friday that Donald Trump is an “unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” her response to the former president’s suggestion that the Kamala Harris surrogate should stand before a firing squad.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” Cheney, a one-time member of GOP House leadership who was ousted from Congress over her vocal Trump criticism, said 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.”

During a rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday night, Trump referred to Cheney as a “radical war hawk” before suggesting he hoped to see her staring down the barrel of a rifle.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said. “And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Cheney and Trump have long feuded, and their rivalry came to a head when Cheney took a seat on the congressional committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In the closing weeks of his campaign, revenge has been at the forefront of the message for Trump, who has frequently referred to his opponents as “the enemy from within.”

Cheney, a lifelong Republican and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said she would vote for Harris in September, and Harris has since deployed her to court anti-Trump Republicans in swing states.