The Arizona Tango Between Trump and Cheney

4 min readNov 3, 2024

November 1, 2024 — Oh, Arizona, you’ve outdone yourself this time! Here we have the ex-President, the man who once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote, now suggesting we stick ol’ Liz Cheney in front of nine barrels and see if she feels differently about, what, warmongering? Yep, that’s right, folks! We’ve entered the theater of the absurd, and the show today is called, “Trump Takes a Jab at Cheney…with a loaded metaphor.”

Now, in any other era, this might have been dismissed as another one of those Trump “figure of speech” moments. But not in Arizona! Enter Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Attorney General, who took one look at Trump’s remarks and said, “Wait a second. Could this be a… death threat?” She’s now got her criminal division dusting off the state statutes, trying to figure out if suggesting Liz stand in front of a firing squad violates Arizona’s particular brand of “Don’t-Actually-Threaten-Your-Enemies” laws. Can you imagine the meeting? “Yes, sir, we’re analyzing whether ‘nine barrels pointed at her face’ qualifies as a threat in this state.”

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s got her own take: Trump is, in her words, “unstable and unhinged.” Well, thank you, Captain Obvious! Then we’ve got Cheney herself — our so-called “radical war hawk” — who’s comparing Trump’s words to the favorite bedtime stories of dictators. “This is how tyrants take down nations,” she says. Because when a president throws out a death threat, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Now, Trump’s camp, ever the masters of creative interpretation, insists that this was all just a big misunderstanding. A “rhetorical device,” if you will. Their spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, says it’s nothing more than Trump’s critique on Cheney’s love for overseas conflicts. “President Trump is 100% against war hawks,” she insists, as if that clears everything right up. Yes, because when I want to criticize someone’s foreign policy, the first image that comes to mind is them staring down nine rifle barrels. Sure, makes perfect sense!

So, what does this all say about where we are today? We’ve got a former president spouting off about firing squads, a VP calling him crazy, and a whole state debating if a metaphor counts as a death threat. And they call this… a “campaign”? Only in America, folks!

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