Trump Explains why he Maligned Liz Cheney

President Trump on Friday clarified that he meant former Rep. Liz Cheney doesn’t have the "guts" to fight on the front lines of war after he received a backlash from Democrats over comments he made Thursday about having guns trained on her. 

"All I’m saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself," the Republican presidential nominee wrote on Truth Social. "It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ‘No thanks!’ Her father decimated the Middle East, and other places, and got rich by doing so. He’s caused plenty of DEATH, and probably never even gave it a thought. That’s not what we want running our Country!"

Trump caused controversy when he called Cheney a "radical war hawk" at an event in Arizona on Thursday, adding, "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. 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 into the mouths of the enemies,’ but she’s a stupid person and I used to have meetings with a lot of people and she always wanted to go to war with people." 

Trump also told reporters at a campaign stop in Dearborn, Michigan, on Friday: "Even in my administration, she was pushing that we go to war with everybody, and I said if you ever gave her a rifle and let her do the fighting, if you ever do that, she wouldn't be doing too well, I will tell you right now. But she's a war hawk. She wants to go kill people unnecessarily."

The remarks prompted accusations from liberals of violent rhetoric and that Trump was suggesting Cheney should face a firing squad.