Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that Donald Trump’s recent comments imagining a violent scene with guns aimed at former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney should eliminate him in the race for the White House.
“This must be disqualifying,” she told reporters in Madison, Wisconsin. “Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president.”
The Democratic nominee for president’s remarks come a day after Trump dreamed up a violent scenario for Cheney, a Republican who’s endorsed Harris and appeared with her on the campaign trail.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” the Republican presidential nominee told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson during an appearance in Arizona.
Trump’s remarks, Harris said Friday, are indicative of how he plans to treat his political opponents if he wins the presidency next week.
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“Rep. Cheney is a true patriot who has shown extraordinary courage in putting country above party,” Harris said. “Trump is increasingly, however, someone who considers his political opponents the enemy, is permanently out for revenge and is increasingly unstable and unhinged. His enemies list has grown longer, his rhetoric has grown more extreme and he is even less focused than before on the needs and concerns and challenges facing the American people.”
Trump has made over 100 public threats to “investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents,” NPR reported last week. Most notably, he suggested last month that members of the “radical left” represent “an enemy within” that he’d confront with military force if elected.
Trump has mocked concerns about him imprisoning his political enemies.
“It’s unbelievable. Did you see ‘Donald Trump wants to put us in jail,’” he said in North Carolina on Wednesday, parroting the alarm.
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“Donald Trump is going to go after some of the scum that you see back there,” he continued, gesturing to the press pit at his rally. “They’re so dishonest. ‘Donald Trump is doing terrible things. He wants to put us in prison.’ That’s what they’ve been trying to do to me for three years — they got this story mixed up.”