With the 2024 presidential election four days away, mainstream and leftist media sources continue to twist remarks made by former President Donald Trump out of context. Earlier this week Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign account Kamala HQ and the media ran the “whether they like it or not” hoax.
In the latest hoax, the Harris campaign X account and the mainstream media are claiming that Trump suggested that former Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) should face a “firing squad,” reporting out of context remarks Trump made while speaking to Tucker Carlson. (See examples from mainstream media sources linked here: Reuters, ABC News, and CNN, as well as leftist media sources here, here, and here.)
Trump’s remarks to Carlson were in response to a question about former Vice President Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney endorsing Harris:
Well, I think it hurts Kamala a lot, actually. Look, she’s a deranged person. The reason she doesn’t like me is that she wanted to stay in Iraq. She wanted to stay, she wants to, you know — tough, tough person, you know people get killed all over, she’s real tough right? They’re not the tough people. Don’t forget, I went against her, and in her state — which is a great beautiful state — she lost for Congress with the highest number in history….
The reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. I don’t want to go to war. She wanted to go, she wanted to stay in Syria — I took ’em out. She wanted to stay in Iraq — I took ’em out. I mean, if it were up to her, we’d be in 50 different countries….
We go to war, we bomb the crap out of it, then we leave. You know, it’s almost like, what are we doing, what’s going on? We bombed the whole Middle East and then we left. What did we get? We got nothing. We destroyed, I mean we bombed the hell out of everything….
Then one day we go in and bomb the hell out of one, we destroy one, and then all of a sudden Iran has the whole Middle East to itself. And by the way, right now Iran has Iraq. Iraq is like a subsidiary of Iran alright?
Trump continued, speaking on critical remarks he made regarding Dick Cheney and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Second Gulf War, and also noted his interactions with Cheney following the presidential pardon for former Chief of Staff to the Vice President Scooter Libby in April 2018:
We did so many bad moves, and her father was … you know her father was — I was very critical of her father for years. I never met him, but I’d say anybody that went into the Middle East I thought was stupid, and he, they say, convinced Bush. Bush, oh, he was another beauty. But he supposedly convinced Bush to go in — him, Bolton, and some other lightweights convinced them to go in. “Let’s go into the Middle East and destroy the whole place, and kill millions of people.” So they went in.
But I was never a fan of Cheney, I was always very critical. And when I announced … I said he made a horrible mistake. What are these people doing?…
And then I announced that I was running, and I was shocked that he was one of the first people. He endorsed me immediately.
But he had something that was very interesting, he had Scooter Libby…. I said, “You know, if I were ever president I’d do something with that guy. That guy got treated very badly, Scooter Libby.” And when I became president, I actually called Dick Cheney. I said, “Let me ask you about Scooter Libby.” He was best friends, he was begging Bush to give Scooter Libby a pardon, but Bush didn’t have the courage to do it…. I released him.
Cheney called me. He said, “That’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen done in politics.” I said, “Look, I’ve heard for years he was treated unfairly, I’ve heard for years that Bush should have given him a pardon. All I did is do something that somebody else should have done.” And Cheney was so th—. He said, “I really want to thank you,” he said. “Now I’m so glad that I actually endorsed you. It’s amazing … that you would do this.” I didn’t speak to him about it.
Trump then mentioned he doesn’t blame Dick Cheney for supporting his daughter Liz Cheney and endorsing Harris, stating:
But then you know, go a couple of years forward to now. I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb.
She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, “Oh, gee, well, let’s send, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.” But she’s a stupid person. … I used to have, I had meetings with a lot of people, and she always wanted to go to war with people.
So whether it’s her, whether it’s Dick — I was surprised a little bit with Dick Cheney. I didn’t know him at all. I only had essentially the one or two phone calls, and it was only a call saying, “Thank you very much for doing that for Scooter Libby, that was nice.” and Scooter Libby, by the way, was beyond — he couldn’t believe that it happened.
