Rep. Liz Cheney has not been cowed by threats of a Republican primary challenge in 2022, insisting that former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen November election undermine democracy in the United States.
Trump and company are vowing to oust Cheney in next year’s Republican primary in Wyoming in retaliation for her Jan. 13 vote to impeach the former president because she holds him responsible for the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by his grassroots supporters. But the congresswoman is undaunted. She said Tuesday that Trump’s actions during the post-election period threatened America’s freedom at home and jeopardized U.S. influence abroad while severely diminishing the Republican Party.
“The president and many around him pushed this idea that the election had been stolen. And that is a dangerous claim; it wasn’t true,” Cheney said during a virtual town hall hosted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, a conservative think tank.
“Those of us who care deeply about our history and our future, who take our oaths and our obligations seriously, will steer our party and our nation into the future,” she added. “We will right the unforgivable wrongs of Jan. 6. We will make our party worthy, once again, of the mantle of Lincoln and Reagan.”
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Cheney, 54, is in charge of the House Republican Conference, making her the No. 3 ranking leader of the caucus. But the congresswoman’s vote last month to impeach Trump — she was 1 of 10 Republicans who did so — roiled her GOP colleagues. Trump’s conservative allies demanded that she step down from leadership; the pragmatic and establishment-oriented Republicans argued for her to stay. Cheney was forced to endure a vote of no-confidence, albeit she survived easily.
That experience has not quieted the congresswoman, who has been censured by the Wyoming Republican Party for breaking with Trump and is already under attack by at least one primary challenger. During her prepared remarks, Cheney did not mention Trump by name; her criticism of the former president was implicit. But during the question-and-answer session, when asked to expand on her thoughts regarding the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Cheney’s remarks were more pointed.
“It’s incumbent upon everybody who takes an oath of office and swears to protect and defend the Constitution, that we recognize what happened on Jan. 6, that we commit ourselves that it must never happen again,” she said.
Elected officials, the congresswoman added, must “recognize the damage that was done by the president, President Trump, saying that somehow the election was stolen, making those claims for months and summoning the mob and provoking them, then, in the attack on the Capitol.”
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, used the balance of her remarks to criticize President Biden on a range of domestic and foreign policy topics, highlighting several differences between congressional Republicans and the new Democratic administration.
