Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that former President Donald Trump’s “violent rhetoric” about former Rep. Liz Cheney is “disqualifying” for the presidency.
On Thursday, Trump attacked Cheney at a campaign event, calling the anti-Trump politician a “war hawk” and suggesting putting her on the front lines of combat “with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her.”
“Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said at an event with Tucker Carlson. “They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’”
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Democrats have widely stated that Trump’s comments amount to saying Cheney should be put in front of a firing squad, and the vice president, speaking to reporters in Wisconsin on Friday, defended Cheney as a “true patriot.”
“This must be disqualifying,” Harris said. “Trump is increasingly, however, someone who considers his political opponents the enemy. He’s 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 the concerns and the challenges facing the American people.”
Earlier in the day, Harris’s campaign said that its internal polls show the vice president leading Trump by double-digits among a critical voting demographic.
Senior Harris campaign officials held a press call Friday afternoon, where they said that Trump’s escalating rhetoric over the past week shows that late-breaking, undecided voters are now supporting Harris ahead of Election Day.
Officials specifically pointed to comments made about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, his suggestion that Cheney be forced to see active combat, and Trump’s promise to take care of women “whether they like it or not.”
“It’s clear that Trump is closing his presidential campaign calling his fellow Americans an enemy from within,” a campaign official said, continuing a theme Harris herself has sought to hammer home as of late. “All of these things are breaking through to the American people, and in the closing days of his campaign, he is clearly focused, as the vice president has said on his enemies list, which is getting longer, and you know, his rhetoric is getting more extreme, and he’s not focused on the American people.”
The RealClearPolitics polling average generally shows Trump leading Harris in seven critical battleground states by a 1-percentage-point average, which runs contrary to the internal numbers the Harris campaign touted Friday.
“The early voting data we do believe puts us in a strong position, particularly with late-breaking undecideds,” the official added.
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Trump himself continued to go after Cheney while campaigning in Dearborn, Michigan, on Friday.
He has courted Arab American voters previously by saying her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, pushed President George W. Bush to war in the Middle East after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A Harris win would mean more war against Muslim-majority countries and a third world war, he said.
“She’s a war hawk who wants to kill people unnecessarily,” Trump said of Liz Cheney on Friday, surrounded by Arab American residents. “If she had to do it herself, and she had to face the consequences of battle, she wouldn’t be doing it, so it’s easy for her to talk, but she wouldn’t be doing it. She’s actually a disgrace.”