[rayiner]

Like many Trump quotes, this isn’t an “ink blot” test:

> I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She is 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.

She has a rifle, and there are nine other guns pointed at her. When are people facing a firing squad given their own weapon? The quote is literally a textbook “what if the war hawk’s shoe were on the other foot” trope.

[camgunz]

I know I skipped my usual edit sweep and my post above was pretty wordy as a result, but TL;DR I think giving her a rifle fits with Trump's pattern of "say it without saying it". If you don't agree, I'm fine conceding this is about combat. Trump is still dehumanizing and advocating for violence against his political enemies. The reason other politicians avoid this kind of rhetoric is they don't want to take the political gain at the risk of causing violence. Despite his rhetoric having led to violence multiple times, Trump continues to take the risk. Draw whatever conclusion you want from that.

[rayiner]

I think the “pattern” is that Trump speaks plainly instead of using corporate HR speak and people read whatever they want into that. But regardless, we shouldn’t be more upset about how Trump is criticizing the war monger than we are about the war mongering.

[camgunz]

I'm a Democrat; I'm upset about both.

There's a difference between talking like you're an LLM trained by focus groups and endangering your political rivals with your rhetoric. A lot of Democratic senators are/were good at that. Don't make yet another false equivalence here.

[meiraleal]

Trump threatened to invade and/or take over Denmark, Mexico, Canada and Panama.