Fact Check: CNN Reporter Claims Trump Called for Liz Cheney to Be Executed
CLAIM: CNN reporter Alayna Treene repeated a false claim that former President Donald Trump had called for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to be executed.
VERDICT: False.
Trump’s remarks about Cheney being eager to send troops into war without understanding how it feels were taken out of context. The former president was questioning how Cheney would feel if she were the one being sent to fight on the front lines of war.
“This violent rhetoric that Donald Trump has been using — including when he referred to Liz Cheney, just a couple days ago, saying that maybe they should line her up and shoot some barrels at her…” Treene said.
As Breitbart News has previously reported, Trump did not call for Cheney to be executed. He was talking to Tucker Carlson about “the reason” Cheney does not like him, which he says is because “she wanted to stay in Iraq,” adding that she “always wanted to go to war with people.”
Trump proceeded to ponder how Cheney would feel if she were the one who was being sent to fight in a war:
[Dick Cheney’s] daughter’s 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, “Aw gee, well, let’s send ten thousand troops right into the mouth of the enemy.” But she’s a stupid person.
Despite Trump never calling for the execution of Cheney, Democrats and the media have distorted Trump’s words.
As Breitbart News previously reported, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked by a reporter if she was “concerned” about Cheney’s “general security” after Trump’s comments.
Breitbart News’s Wendell Husebo previously reported that even never-Trumpers such as former Congressman Joe Walsh, and Vox senior correspondent Zach Beauchamp even debunked the hoax that Donald Trump had called for Liz Cheney’s execution.
“Trump did NOT call for Liz Cheney to be executed,” Walsh wrote in a post on X. “This is what’s so wrong with our politics today.”
Walsh added, “This short clip is so deceptive. Trump is NOT calling for Liz Cheney to be executed in front of a firing line. He’s not. Listen to the entirety of what he said. In Trump’s typically stupid, ugly fashion, he’s trying to make a point about Cheney’s stance on war.”