Embattled Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, scorned by her party for working with Democrats on the Jan. 6 riot investigation, linked the tumultuous event to Russia’s attack on Ukraine in a bid to get people to focus on problems larger than political infighting.
Speaking this week to members of the centrist Republican Ripon Society, she said, “Some things have to matter,” pointing to the violent Capitol protest of President Joe Biden’s election certification and the fight for democracy in Ukraine.
“If I could sum up both the lessons of what’s gone on since Jan. 6 and the lessons of what’s happening in the world today as we watch Russia invade Ukraine, it’s something that somebody said to me just a few weeks after Jan. 6,” she said in comments shared with Secrets.
“This colleague of mine said to me, ‘Some things have to matter.’ And I just ask you all to think about that. Some things have to matter,” she said.
Cheney has been under fire for her association on the House committee investigating the riot. However, she has stood firm amid withering criticism from former President Donald Trump and others in her party who have moved to censure her.
Describing that effort, Cheney told Ripon members the process has gone well and is stripped of politics despite many of the anti-Trump sentiments by key panel members, including Rep. Adam Schiff of California.
“I am so incredibly proud every day of how this committee is operating,” she said.
“We tune out the politics on the committee, and I’ve never been part of anything like that in Washington. We are not perfect — I don’t think there’s a single issue that I agree with Adam Schiff on. I don’t think there’s a single issue that I agree with most of the members on the Democratic side of the committee on, except the issue that matters more than any other issue — and that is the Constitution of the United States of America and whether or not our elected officials are going to take their obligation seriously,” she said.
Addressing the war, she warned Washington about becoming too isolationist.
And she praised the Ukrainian people for fighting against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Cheney added is likely to bring more ugliness to the fight.
“There can be no equivocation between a democratically elected sovereign government, sovereign nation of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin, who is conducting the most horrific, significant, large-scale military attack on the continent of Europe since World War II,” she said. “And it’s going to get worse.”
Without naming names, Cheney also hit back at some in her party she considers radicals and worse.
“Right now, in our party, we have people who are antisemitic openly. We have people who are racist openly. And we have people who have attended white supremacist conferences openly,” said Cheney, who is in a fight for her seat back home. “In politics, we always want to have a big tent. But no tent can ever be big enough for those views. And we all have to be very clear about that.”
