Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said her double-digit loss to a Trump-backed challenger in Tuesday’s GOP primary showed that “large portions” of the Republican Party are “very sick.”
Cheney made the comments in an interview on ABC’s This Week that will air Sunday, snippets of which were released on Friday and Saturday. In this particular clip, the Wyoming lawmaker was asked what her 37-point loss to attorney Harriet Hageman said about the Republican Party.
CHENEY LOSES TO TRUMP-BACKED HAGEMAN IN WYOMING GOP HOUSE PRIMARY
“It says that clearly his hold is very strong among some portions of the Republican Party,” she said, referencing former President Donald Trump, who campaigned diligently to force Cheney out of her seat.
Offering an explanation for the large margin she lost by, Cheney noted, “My state of Wyoming is not necessarily a representative, sort of, you know, sample of the party,” to which anchor Jon Karl replied that it is one of the reddest states in the nation.
“And I think it says a couple of things: I think it says people continue to believe the lie, they continue to believe what he’s saying, which is very dangerous,” she continued. “I think it also tells you that large portions of our party, including the leadership of our party, is very sick.”
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was the No. 3 House Republican and was a staunch ally of the 45th president. She broke with Trump after he began denying the outcome of the 2020 election and fully denounced him after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Trump’s most loyal congressional allies tried to oust Cheney from her leadership position in February 2021, but the vote to remove her as House GOP Conference chair was unsuccessful. Her standing with GOP colleagues weakened in the months that followed, as members grew frustrated with her continued comments regarding the former president and her support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Jan. 6 commission.
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Members eventually voted Cheney out of her position in May of that year, and the Wyoming Republican joined Pelosi’s House select committee despite warnings from GOP leadership not to do so. Those warnings came after Pelosi rejected House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) picks for the committee, a move Cheney supported despite it being unprecedented.
As her prominence grew as an anti-Trump activist, especially with the wide-ranging coverage of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings, the former president and his allies went to work campaigning for Hageman.
