At a Halloween night stop on Tucker Carlson’s national tour, Donald Trump joined Carlson on stage for an hour-and-a-half conversation that included many of his usual talking points — but also some striking remarks imagining Liz Cheney being sent to war.
After criticizing Cheney for regularly pushing for the United States to engage militarily overseas, Trump said that he didn’t blame her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, “for sticking with his daughter.”
“But his daughter’s a very dumb individual, very dumb,” Trump said of Liz Cheney, to laughs from the crowd. “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.”
“You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,’” Trump continued, in some surprisingly antiwar remarks. “But she’s a stupid person. I’d have meetings with a lot of people and she always wanted to go to war with people.”
Trump was led into the topic when Carlson asked Trump if he felt it was weird to have Dick Cheney’s “repulsive little daughter” Liz Cheney supporting Harris and opposing him. Trump said that he felt that Cheney supporting Harris actually hurt his Democratic opponent.
“She’s a deranged person,” Trump began. “The reason she doesn’t like me is that she wanted to stay in Iraq, she wants — tough person, people get killed all over — she’s real tough, right?” Trump said sarcastically. “They’re not the tough people.”
He also recollected fondly opposing her after she voted for him to be impeached, leading her to be soundly defeated as she ran for re-election.
“She lost for Congress with the highest number in history,” Trump said, beaming. “There has never been a Congressperson that lost by almost 40 points, and the reason is because if they were ever in that situation, they’d quit.”
“The reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people,” Trump continued, before going on a run in praise of peace. “I don’t want to go to war. 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.”
Trump pointed to the danger of wars and the number of deaths they cause, before speaking at greater length about the expense. He complained about modern wars not leading to the United States taking resources, such as oil, following those wars.
The Republican candidate argued that Iran and Iraq used to serve as checks on one another, fighting over territory — but that after the United States attacked Iraq, it’s given Iran control of the region.
Trump also criticized Dick Cheney and a former member of both the Bush and Trump administrations, John Bolton, for their respective enthusiasm for war.
“I was never a fan of Cheney. I was always very critical,” Trump said, again turning back to the expense of spending $9 trillion “bombing the hell out of the Middle East.”
“And what the hell did we get, other than lots of dead people, including our people?” Trump asked. “We got nothing.”
The conversation also included Trump specifically targeting both Hillary Clinton and, of course, Kamala Harris. He contrasted the pair, praising Clinton’s intelligence while continuing to allege that Harris isn’t a smart person.
“Hillary Clinton, who’s a smart woman — much smarter than Kamala, but doesn’t lie as much,” Trump asserted. “Hillary was a liar, a horrible scoundrel. But this one lies so much. And she’s a low IQ individual. She doesn’t even know she’s lying, I’m telling you. This is not what you want for your president.”
He continued, also bringing Joe Biden in for an attack. “She’s a very low IQ individual. She’s dumb as a rock, and you can’t have that, you can’t have that,” Trump said. “We love our country too much. You can’t have it. We just went through four years of it, you can’t have anymore — a country can only take so much.”
Trump did not provide any evidence to back up his insults about his rivals’ intelligence.
You can watch the full interview by Tucker Carlson with Donald Trump in the video above.