Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump for his comments about Liz Cheney, saying they “disqualified” him from being president.
Trump, at an event with Tucker Carlson on Thursday, said Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman who supported Harris, should be put on a battlefield “with nine barrels fired at her face.”
Democrats immediately criticized him for the comment, but Harris went a step further and said Trump should no longer be in the presidential race.
“This should be disqualifying,” Harris told reporters in Wisconsin. “Anyone who wants to be president of the United States and uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president.”
‘This should be disqualifying,’ Kamala Harris said of Trump’s comment about Liz Cheney
He called Cheney “a true patriot who has shown extraordinary courage in putting country above party.”
‘Trump, however, considers his political opponents as enemies and is constantly seeking revenge and is increasingly unstable and unhinged. His list of enemies has gotten longer.
“His rhetoric has become more extreme and he is even less focused than before on the needs, concerns and challenges facing the American people,” Harris added.
The Democratic candidates said she has not spoken to Cheney since Trump’s comment.
Trump has long been a critic of Cheney, who criticized him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and was one of two Republican lawmakers who served on the House committee that investigated it.
“She is a radical war hawk,” Trump said of her at an event Thursday night at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels firing at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when guns are pointed at her face.
Both Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have endorsed Harris.
Trump had mentioned Liz Cheney’s father before unleashing the tirade.
‘I don’t blame him for staying with his daughter. But your daughter is a very dumb, very dumb person,” Trump said.
‘Let’s put her there with a rifle and nine cannons shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how you feel about it. You know, when guns are pointed in her face,” Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson about Liz Cheney.
Liz Cheney has endorsed and campaigned with Kamala Harris
Cheney took to social media to respond to Trump, saying “this is how dictators destroy free nations.”
“They threaten death to those who speak against them,” he wrote in the publication. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a mean, vindictive, cruel and unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
The Trump campaign said the former president was criticizing Cheney’s tough foreign policy and that they were being misrepresented in the media.
“President Trump is absolutely right that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight in them, rather than going into combat themselves,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
“This is a continuation of the latest false media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris.”
Trump repeated that argument when asked about his comments on Friday.
‘In my administration she was pushing for us to go to war with everyone and I said it would be better if they gave her a rifle and let her fight. If you ever do that, she won’t do very well. I would say it right now. “She wants to kill people unnecessarily and she had to do it herself and she had to face the consequences of the battle,” he said.
‘So it’s easy for her to talk, but she wouldn’t do it. “It’s actually a shame,” he added.
But Trump has been a longtime critic of Cheney.
In March, Trump called for Cheney to be jailed for her role in the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that Cheney should “go to jail along with the rest” of the Jan. 6 House select committee.