Former President Donald Trump on Friday said his comments about former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming facing guns were being misconstrued, using social media to emphasize the hypothetical war-zone context of the remarks he made late Thursday to an Arizona crowd.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Mr. Trump said when telling Tucker Carlson during a conversation that Ms. Cheney was too eager to send troops into war zones.

Democrats and media outlets seized on the eyebrow-raising rhetoric from Mr. Trump, particularly the part about Ms. Cheney having “guns trained on her face.”

“All I’m saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn’t have ’the guts’ to fight herself,” Mr. Trump said Friday on Truth Social. “It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ’No thanks!’”

Mr. Trump underscored the context of his remarks as he vies for votes in seven battleground states that are expected to decide whether he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ms. Cheney hit back in an X post on Friday.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” Ms. Cheney wrote on X with a clip of Mr. Trump’s Thursday night comments. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

Mr. Trump, writing on Truth Social, circled the debate back to Ms. Cheney and her father, Vice President Dick Cheney, and his role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years.

“Her father decimated the Middle East, and other places, and got rich by doing so,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s caused plenty of DEATH, and probably never even gave it a thought. That’s not what we want running our Country!”

• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.