Chris Christie doesn’t believe Donald Trump was kidding around or being hyperbolic when he publicly fantasized about Liz Cheney facing down a row of military weapons.
“I wish it were dementia,” Christie said on The View. Instead, “That is him sending a very clear message. That message is ‘Mess with me and [when] I get back in charge of the government, violence is coming in your direction.’” Christie said he knows Trump meant what he said because “he really hates Liz and he hates her father,” former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The View’s Ana Navarro, meanwhile, she she found it “incredibly ironic” that while Trump and Republicans are spend calling Kamala Harris and her supporters “communists and socialists... this is exactly what communists do. They shoot their opponents, their opposition, in firing squads.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump made the comments at a campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona where he sat on stage with Tucker Carlson Thursday night. Highlighting Cheney’s reputation as a “war hawk,” Trump said, “Let’s put [Liz Cheney] with a rifle standing there with 9 barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Backlash to Trump’s violent fantasy was swift, as the ex-president continues his retaliation against the former congresswoman for being one of his fiercest critics, or as he has taken to calling them, “the enemy within.”
Cheney pointed out the alarming uptick in Trump’s incendiary remarks in her response on X/Twitter, writing “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death.”
“This is amazing coming from a guy who is such a coward,” Christie added on The View, quipping that Trump wouldn’t go anywhere “he has a risk of breaking a fingernail.”
Jokes aside, co-host Joy Behar asked Christie why Trump’s comment isn’t “disqualifying” for the office of president.
“It’s disqualifying amongst dozens and dozens of other things he’s said and done that should be disqualified, but this is a democracy,” he said. “The way we disqualify people in a democracy is to defeat them.”
