Liz Cheney Shares Harsh Words For Her Party About Donald Trump
Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney — a woman who has spent her life surrounded by politics as the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — is one of only a handful of Republicans who have been vocal in their opposition to former President Donald Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.
She was one of only 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot, which was meant to disrupt the counting and certification of the 2020 electoral vote, and the action got her ousted from her leadership role as chair of the Republican caucus in the House (via CNN).
However, that led her to another leadership role on a bipartisan level as co-chair on the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
On Dec. 13, 2021, when the committee voted to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify, Cheney read aloud text messages sent to Meadows on the day of the attack demanding that he have Trump tell his supporters to stand down and leave the Capitol, according to The Washington Post.
She offered a warning about what the White House knew, and, weeks later, as the new year began, she had another warning about Trump that she hopes her party will heed.
Liz Cheney believes Trump could have stopped the Capitol riot — if he wanted to
When Liz Cheney informed America — and Donald Trump — what the House select committee on Jan. 6 knew about the administration's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, she made the following statement.
"These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway."
On Jan. 2, 2022, Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday morning news shows, dropping more bombs about what the committee knows, including the fact that Trump watched the insurrection on television from the dining room in the White House residence.
"He could have simply walked a few feet to the White House briefing room, he could have gone immediately on live television and asked his supporters to stop what was happening, ask them to go home," Cheney said on "CBS This Morning." "He failed to do that. He instead ... had the motivation, at the same time, the violent assault was happening, he's watching television, he's also calling at least one senator urging delay of the electoral vote."
Cheney then went on to declare that Trump can never be allowed to be president again. "So, this is a man who has demonstrated that he is at war with the rule of law," she said. "He's demonstrated that he's willing to blow through every guardrail of democracy, and he can never be anywhere near the Oval Office again."
She tells the Republican party that it has a choice to make
As 2024 presidential polling shows Donald Trump as the top choice for Republicans, according to the New York Post, Liz Cheney warned the party and the nation about how dangerous Trump is and would still be if he were to ever be president of the United States again.
"We entrust the survival of our republic into the hands of the chief executive, and when a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted," Cheney told George Stephanopoulos (via ABC News) on Jan. 2, 2022, adding that Trump is "clearly unfit for future office."
During her appearance on "CBS This Morning," she had a message for the Republican party.
"I think the country needs a strong Republican Party going forward, but our party has to choose," Cheney said. "We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both. And right now, there are far too many Republicans who are trying to enable the former president, embrace the former president. "Look the other way and hope that the former president goes away, trying to obstruct the activities of this committee."
She continued: "But we won't be deterred. At the end of the day, the facts matter, and the truth matters."