At an on-stage event dominated by extensive rambling and derogatory attacks against his opponents, former President Donald Trump — just four days out from Election Day — suggested that one of his top Republican critics would not be such a “war hawk” if she had guns “trained on her face.”
Trump, sitting in a chair next to right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson for what was billed as a live interview event, told an arena of thousands of supporters Thursday that President Joe Biden was a “stupid bastard” and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, was “a sleaze bag.”
He also said that he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, “do anything he wants” in his second administration related to healthcare policy, noting that his newfound political ally “wants to look at the vaccines.”
“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said, he can do it,” Trump said of the former independent presidential candidate. “He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants — everything. I think it’s great,” Trump continued.
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But the former president, no stranger to personal attacks, reserved his most violent comments for former Rep. Liz Cheney. They were the latest example of Trump using violent rhetoric against his perceived foes.
In a lengthy and uncompromising riff on Cheney, Trump seemed to insinuate that the former congresswoman would be less of a “war hawk” — as Trump referred to her — if she was in a war herself with guns “trained on her face.”
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” Trump said. “Okay, let’s see how she feels about it. You know when the guns are trained on her face — you know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building,” Trump continued.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Friday, “President Trump was clearly explaining that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves.”
In an updated statement later Friday morning, Leavitt said Trump’s remarks were “100% correct” and claimed the backlash over the comments was “the latest fake media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris.”
In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the relationship between Trump and Cheney frayed. Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have endorsed Harris over Trump.
“She’s a stupid person,” Trump said on Thursday night about the Republican former congresswoman, also calling her “a bad person” and a “very dumb individual.” Carlson referred to her as Dick Cheney’s “repulsive little daughter.”
Trump explicitly told the Arizona crowd that he will only lose next Tuesday’s election if there is “cheating,” setting the stage to dispute a potential loss.
“Just keep the cheating down,” he said. “The only thing can stop us is the cheating. It’s the only thing that can stop us.”
Liz Cheney has recently appeared on the campaign trail with Harris, warning of Trump’s efforts to subvert the will of voters.
Cheney responded to Trump on social media early Friday.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she posted 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. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala.”
The campaign’s spokesperson, Ian Sams, said in a statement blasted Trump’s comments and said that the former president “is so all-consumed by his grievances, the people who he disagrees with and who he sees as opposing him politically, he treats as enemies.”
Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, called for other Republicans to rebuke Trump over his comments and appealed to voters to reject his “calls for violence and retribution” in a statement posted to X by her gun violence prevention organization.
“Declaring that a person should be shot and killed simply for supporting a different candidate is un-American,” she said. “Any Republican who claims to respect the constitution and rule of law has a responsibility to speak out against Donald Trump’s dangerous comments immediately.”
In other instances, Trump has suggested during the campaign that Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to face the death penalty. He has also called for shoplifters to be shot on sight.
The degrading comments from Trump about his perceived enemies come as polling shows a consistent reticence among many women toward his candidacy — a gender gap that benefits Harris in most polling, nationally, by more than double digits. Women, also, are early voting at a significantly higher rate than men so far.
Harris has sought to emphasize this in the closing stages of the race.
She told NBC News in an exclusive interview on Thursday that Trump‘s remarks this week about protecting women whether they “like it or not” is another sign of how he “devalues” women.
Trump delivered the harsh remarks in pivotal Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and has the biggest population in Arizona. In 2020, voter defections from Trump driven by independents, women and suburban voters led the county to vote against the Republican presidential candidate for the first time in decades, costing Trump Arizona’s 11 electoral votes.
Trump, from the stage, also touted what would amount to a staggering and consequential proposal: That he would turn to Elon Musk to help massively shed the federal budget, potentially by even one-third of its current annual spending level. Neither Trump nor Musk has offered any specifics about what programs or even agencies it would eliminate to fulfill such a staggering cut.
“He thinks he can save $2 trillion — in which case we don’t have a deficit,” Trump said. “Two trillion dollars a year, by the way!”
After two earlier campaign rallies in the day — in New Mexico and Nevada — Trump concluded his final stop late into the western night with demeaning name-calling and semi-tangential commentaries that lasted several minutes.
Before Trump took the stage, Carlson delivered an oration about masculinity, in which he mocked Second gentleman Doug Emhoff and Gov. Tim Walz, who he referred to as the “creepy guy that’s following [Harris] around on the campaign trail.”
In the closing days of his third presidential campaign, Trump has hit the road without his one-time GOP rivals, like former Amb. Nikki Haley, Gov. Ron DeSantis or Sen. Tim Scott. He has also not rallied with Georgia’s popular GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.
Instead, Trump has chosen to align himself on the trail with provocative figures like Charlie Kirk, who said this week that wives who secretly vote for Harris in the election would “undermine their husbands,” and Carlson, who was fired by Fox News.
Max Burman contributed to this story.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:
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