When former President Donald Trump criticized former Rep. Liz Cheney for trying to push Americans into war, the legacy media rushed to her defense, twisting Trump’s words to make it seem like he was threatening her with a firing squad.
“She’s a radical warhawk. Let’s put her with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, when the guns are trained on her face. They’re all warhawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,’” Trump said Thursday at a campaign event with Tucker Carlson.
Clearly, Trump was saying Cheney wants to send Americans to die in overseas wars. He pointed out she — and other D.C. elites in the military-industrial complex — would never put themselves in the positions they are placing the nation’s soldiers.
“I’d have meetings with a lot of people, and she always wanted to go to war with people,” Trump said.
But legacy media, in typical style, cherry-picked Trump’s comments to make it seem he — not Cheney — was inciting violence.
“Trump uses violent rhetoric to attack ‘war hawk’ Liz Cheney,” reads a headline from Good Morning America. The host attacked Trump and applauded Harris during Friday morning’s show.
She said Trump was using “increasing dark and violent rhetoric against his political rivals … even suggesting former House Republican leader Liz Cheney, who has endorsed Kamala Harris, be put in the line of fire.” Meanwhile, another headline from the show said Harris held a “star-studded rally in Las Vegas.”
Reuters pulled a similar stunt. “Trump suggests Liz Cheney should face firing squad for her foreign policy stance,” reads its headline. The outlet cherry-picked the first section of Trump’s comment about Cheney “standing there with nine barrels shooting at her” and “guns trained on her face” — omitting the rest of his comments.
Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s communications chief, called the piece “100% fabricated crap” and “a lie.”
“Trump was obviously depicting Cheney as deployed to a war zone (with her own rifle, even. How’s that a ‘firing squad’?) just as she’s done to others,” Murtaugh posted to X.
A simple Google search reveals many similarly dishonest takes from left-wing media, from The New York Times to Newsweek. A headline from The Daily Beast even claims “Trump Fantasizes About Shooting Female Rival in the Face.”
Cheney quickly jumped on Trump’s remarks, painting herself as a victim.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death,” Cheney posted on X. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala.”
Never mind this supposed “dictator” wants to end forever wars on the other side of the world and dismantle the military-industrial complex, while Cheney would happily send Americans to die in conflicts across the globe.
The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway pointed out left-wing media are knowingly spreading this dishonest take to bash Trump.
He also noted the left has shifted from attacking Republicans as supposed neocons and warhawks, to defending neocons and warhawks from Republican criticism.
“I lived through the Iraq war and I’m sorry but now DEMOCRATS are outraged by the suggestion rich politicians vote for wars without bearing the burden of fighting in them?” Hemingway wrote on X. “That’s all they said about Republicans for almost a decade.”
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Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
