Liz Cheney is back and unloading on the current leaders of her ancestral GOP
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, ousted by a hard-right revolt within his own party this fall, said this week he will be "taking this time now" to think about his political future. The California deadline for filing for his seat is Dec. 8.
Now comes Liz Cheney, a former member of McCarthy's own Republican leadership team, to give McCarthy some food for thought. He is not likely to find it palatable.
Cheney has written a book about President Trump's efforts to remain in office after he had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. The book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, is also about Cheney's rather lonely role in resisting those efforts.
It will be officially out next week, but got an early preview when CNN obtained a copy independently and published excerpts this week, ahead of an embargo. The excerpts have produced headlines across news outlets, primarily for Cheney's treatment of McCarthy and other former colleagues.
Cheney says McCarthy was guilty of "cowardice" in his unwillingness to stand up to Trump, according to the excerpts. She says McCarthy had told her he knew Biden had won the election and she even reports that Trump himself had told McCarthy he knew it too.
And yet, Cheney notes, according to the excerpts, McCarthy went on TV denying that Biden had won. Moreover, in the hours immediately after the riot that breached the Capitol on January 6, McCarthy spoke on the House floor calling the violence "unacceptable, undemocratic and un-American" — yet he also joined with his party members who voted against certifying the electors from some of the states Biden had won.
Without the votes of those states, no candidate would have had a majority in the Electoral College. That would have triggered a "contingent election," with the winner chosen by a vote of the House. Trump's allies thought they could win such a vote because it is taken as a roll call of the states: just one vote per state, regardless of a state's population or number of seats.
Efforts to carry out that plan have since produced federal charges against Trump for his role in the January 6 th 2021 attack on the Capitol and formed the background for charges against Trump and 18 other codefendants in Georgia.
Cheney calls out McCarthy as well as the new House speaker
While Trump surely remains the central villain of Cheney's narrative and analysis, the CNN excerpts also include scathing criticism of Republicans generally. She calls them "enablers and collaborators" who fell in line with Trump's false claims. And she singles out both McCarthy and his still-freshly minted successor Mike Johnson of Louisiana for sharp condemnation.
She reports, according to the excerpts, that she was shocked that McCarthy went to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to reconcile with him three weeks after the Capitol attack. The excerpts have her protesting to McCarthy with: "Mar-a-Lago, Kevin? What the hell?" Cheney reports McCarthy replied that Trump's staff had asked him to come because the former president "wasn't eating" and was "very depressed."
Turning on the new speaker
Cheney's treatment of Johnson, McCarthy's successor, in the excerpts is relatively dismissive by comparison. She notes that she was House Republican Conference Chair when Johnson was first elected to a lower rung of the party leadership and they worked together. She recalls that he showed strong interest in currying favor with Trump, at times joining the president's traveling entourage and bringing his own constitutional law background to the defense table in Trump's first impeachment trial in 2020.
But Cheney unloads on Johnson in the excerpts for his role in an amicus curiae brief in a case filed by the Texas attorney general after the 2020 election. It urged the Supreme Court to set aside the Electoral College votes of several states that Biden won. The argument was that these states' voting procedures had been imposed by state courts rather than by state legislatures and were therefore invalid. Johnson recruited many GOP members to sign on in the month after the election (but before the January 6 events). According to the excerpts, Cheney asked Johnson about this and was told: "We just need to do this one last thing for Trump."
Despite objections from Cheney and others, most Republican members of the House did sign that brief, including McCarthy. But the Supreme Court still declined to hear the case.
While Johnson was aggressively gathering signatures from his colleagues, according to the excerpts, Cheney overheard one of them say in exasperation: "The things we do for 'Orange Jesus.' " In the excerpts, Cheney names the congressman, who has since denied using those terms for the former president.
In fact, the appearance of the Cheney excerpts this week on CNN and elsewhere in the news media space has prompted a flurry of denials from various spokespersons.
"The book belongs in the fiction section of the bookstore," said Steve Cheung, spokesman for Trump.
A departure from a lifetime trajectory
Until the events of late 2020 and early 2021, Cheney was the third ranking Republican in the House behind GOP Leader McCarthy and party whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana (who is now majority leader under Speaker Johnson).
Cheney was at the time a strong prospect to be the first Republican woman elected speaker. That was surely an ambition with special meaning for her parents, who met as graduate students and had coauthored a book about speakers in history. Cheney's father, Richard, was himself a potential Speaker when he was a congressman from Wyoming and also the minority whip, the House GOP's second-ranking leader, in the late 1980s. Instead, he left Congress to be secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush and was elected vice president under President George W. Bush in 2000. His wife Lynne, Liz Cheney's mother, was director of the National Endowment for the Humanities under President Ronald Reagan.
Although lifelong Republicans, both Cheney's parents have backed her resistance to Trump. That includes the year she spent as the high-profile vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol, a panel whose last act was to recommend that the DOJ bring criminal charges against Trump. While her performance in that role won her many new admirers, mostly outside the GOP , it cost her the support of her base in Wyoming. She lost her 2022 primary to Harriet Hageman by a 2-to-1 vote. Wyoming had given Trump a winning margin of more than 40 points in 2016 and has remained loyal since.
Cheney was urged by Democrats and "never Trumpers" in the GOP to run against Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries. But she has left that task to others, spending her time promoting the work, findings and legacy of the January 6 committee and warning against the perils of another Trump administration – or even candidacy.
The book comes at an inopportune time for Republicans
There is no good time for a book as critical of one's own party as Oath and Honor , at least not from the perspective of a career in that party. But it is particularly uncomfortable for the GOP to take these punches right now.
After two rounds of bruising battles over the speakership, the House majority has yet to pass most of its spending bills. Even a perennially popular piece of legislation such as the annual reauthorizing of the Department of Defense stalled in Congress for the first time in six decades.
Yet valuable floor time continues to be expended on relatively minor matters. And the media coverage continues to focus on such dysfunction as the ethics case against Republican freshman George Santos of New York. The House spent Friday morning on a motion to expel Santos, based on a thoroughly damning report from the Republican-run ethics committee. Santos, only the third House member expelled since the Civil War, is facing a 23-count federal indictment for fraud and other crimes. He had mounted a lively defense in the media, attacking the integrity, work ethic and sobriety of his fellow House members. Expulsion required a two-thirds majority vote but cleared that hurdle with ease, 311-114.
About half the chamber's Republicans voted against expulsion, some arguing it was bad precedent to expel members facing criminal charges before they had been tried and convicted. With Santos gone, the GOP majority is down to three seats to spare. Ten House Republicans have already announced they would not seek reelection in 2024, and there has been speculation that McCarthy might retire even before his current term ends.
So stay tuned. There can always be yet another surprise.
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Ms Cheney will be interviewed by Nicole Wallace on MSNBC this Monday, it should be a hoot.
Do you think all 15 people that watch MSDNC will watch the interview?
Cheney represents the dying voice of reason in the current GOP.
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I guess when you think 15 is in actuality 1.5million anything is possible. If you are going to say stupid shit chose one of your pal's seeds.
The city I live in has 1.5 million residents. Not exactly something to brag about having viewers.
Wallace's show airs from 4-6p.m ... that should give you a clue considering a lot of people are not even home from work by then.
Most republicans...yes, still at work
democrats? not so much
I'm not a big fan of Liz Cheney. Never have been and never will be.
I guess that maybe there are still sane republicans out there.
Who'd a thunk it?
There are in fact a lot. They just don't happen to think the way you and others on the liberal left do that's all.
Just reminds me that no matter how utterly crazy and demonstrably proven wrong, a substantial part of the current GOP will continue supporting Trump's lies. It is sickening to see how partisanship can win over integrity and responsibility.
Liz who?
Do you consider Liz Cheney a poor Republican?
It seems she handed in her conservative credentials because of an all consuming hate and single minded purpose. She allowed herself to be used for a lets get Trump fiasco disguised as an investigation into Jan 6th so it would not happen again. At that point I don't recall her doing much to promote the conservative platform.
I think she saw Trump as a RINO, and a long term danger to the Party. I agree.
Fiasco ?
Do you disagree with Liz Cheney's (and the committee's) findings that Trump attempted to steal the election ()?
Do you consider the testimonies of the high-ranking GOP witnesses (who all put their political careers in jeopardy to testify) to be false? Were Rusty Bowers, Bill Barr, Sarah Matthews, Cassidy Hutchinson, Brad Raffensperger, Pat Cipollone, etc. all lying?
Do you think that it is better for the GOP members to just shut up and go along with Trump's con-job or to stand up and challenge excessive wrongdoing by the leader of their party?
"Conservatives" aka MAGA, have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into thinking Trump did nothing wrong. Hence the charge of "fiasco disguised as an investigation".
The truth is that the J6 committee produced a mountain of evidence against Trump.
I read yesterday that Trump says he wants the opportunity , to prove at trial, that the Democrats rigged the election. That will never happen. Not the opportunity, the proof.
There are two elements that taken together clearly show the maleficent intentions of Trump. First, he has claimed , going back to 2016, that if he ever loses and election it was because he was cheated. He says this, and did in 2020, before a single vote has been cast. It has been effective in brainwashing the Trump voters into believing he was robbed. The second element is Trumps preposterous claims that the extent of the Democrats stealing occurred from almost the entire length and width of the United States. He alleged rigged elections from New Hampshire to Arizona and plenty of places in between. The idea that there was some sort of collusion by Democratic state parties all over the country to rob Trump , which is what he believes, is completely ridiculous.
WHERE IS THE PROOF ? How many years do we have to wait to see evidence of this rigging?
MAGA and republicans in general have allowed themselves to be bamboozled. The rest of the country should not have to suffer because of their gullible stupidity.
“It seems she handed in her conservative credentials because of an all consuming hate and single minded purpose.”
Perhaps she took to heart the sage advise from her fellow Wyoming Senator:
”If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.” ~ Alan Simpson
Or is it the new definition of RINOplasty: cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Yet he obviously does not believe this and there is evidence supporting this assertion.
The core MAGA who actually believe this nonsense have been bamboozled. The rest of those supporting Trump are likely pretending to believe him (at least in part) out of misguided party loyalty.
I have no problem with her believing that. I have no problem with her screaming it from the rooftops or even going on cable news shows to tell her story of woe. What I do have a problem with is after the Republicans could not put people on the Jan 6th committee that she chose she went knowing it was a sham and the main reason was to go after Trump and not learn from all the issues that could lead to such a breach of security in the future. She went on the committee anyway and went over and above showing her hatred of Trump and damn actually doing her job. It reminds me of calling something inflation reduction when in reality it doesnt reduce inflation at all. She let herself be used so the clown show could say it was bipartisan when in reality all you needed was a hate Trump card to get in.
Did I say that?
“She let herself be used so the clown show could say it was bipartisan when in reality all you needed was a hate Trump card to get in.”
well said and very true.
That was a question. In fact, I asked several questions (which of course you ignore).
You labeled the Jan 6th committee work a 'fiasco' so I asked:
"Do you think that it is better for the GOP members to just shut up and go along with Trump's con-job or to stand up and challenge excessive wrongdoing by the leader of their party?"
Liz Cheney did not just shut up. She challenged Trump's excessive wrongdoing. Do you think she was wrong to do that?
You focus on the make-up of the committee while ignoring that the critical testimonies were from high-ranking GOP members under oath. My comment focused on the testimonies of the GOP witnesses.
Do you consider the testimonies of the high-ranking GOP witnesses (who all put their political careers in jeopardy to testify) to be false? Were Rusty Bowers, Bill Barr, Sarah Matthews, Cassidy Hutchinson, Brad Raffensperger, Pat Cipollone, etc. all lying?
Do you consider the testimonies of the high-ranking GOP witnesses (who all put their political careers in jeopardy to testify) to be false? Were Rusty Bowers, Bill Barr, Sarah Matthews, Cassidy Hutchinson, Brad Raffensperger, Pat Cipollone, etc. all lying?
A question does not necessarily imply that you made a particular statement. Sometimes a question is simply a means of soliciting an opinion.
But your reply suggests that you have not concluded that these witnesses were lying. You claim that you simply do not know. ⇣
No, I think I have a much better understanding of this reality. It is quite clear that ALL these high-ranking GOP operatives are NOT going to compromise their political careers to publicly state consistent, damaging lies about the leader of their party violating his oath of office and engaging in potentially criminal activity. Further, their testimony is entirely consistent with each other's and the evidence that the public can freely observe (e.g. Raffensperger call, Trump's own speeches, the claims of Trump's sycophants, etc.).
I would think that if a politician took an oath and made a statement under oath that they would not be lying unless it is proven that they did. Their continuing in their careers surely depends on not being proven to be a perjurer.
It seems incredible that anyone would —based on the evidence that they can see for themselves— give much probability that all these high-ranking GOP witnesses who testified under oath in a consistent manner while compromising their own political careers would lie against the leader of their party.
The easy, safe path would be to NOT testify and/or be very subdued with their responses. Why would they all make up bold lies against the leader of their party?
So they told the truth of what they knew to be true even though it could have caused the termination of their careers. It takes principles and integrity to do that even though it means they could be rejected by an electorate that would rather live with lies than with truth, integrity and principles, as was experienced by Liz Cheney.
A lot of people cannot, for some reason, see this obvious reality.
Liz Cheney says US would be 'sleepwalking into dictatorship' if Donald Trump wins 2024 election
LINK ->
She should tone down the emotive rhetoric. People dismiss extreme language.
I would have stated that Trump had demonstrated that he will violate the CotUS if it meets his needs and that he will attempt to violate the most fundamental underpinning of democracy — the votes of the electorate.
Those claims are defensible because that is exactly what Trump already attempted after his 2020 loss.
The Jan 6th committee presented testimonies from high-ranking, connected GOP operatives who compromised their political careers by giving testimony against Trump.
Do you think those GOP testimonies were lies? Exaggerations?
The Jan 6th committee hearings were NOT a bunch of emotive rhetoric but rather founded on very serious, very sober testimony from GOP members who compromised their political careers in the process of testifying.
You continue to dodge.
The Jan 6th committee presented testimonies from high-ranking, connected GOP operatives who compromised their political careers by giving testimony against Trump.
Do you think those GOP testimonies were lies? Exaggerations?
Do you think Rusty Bowers was spewing emotive rhetoric?
Do you think Rusty Bowers was spewing emotive rhetoric?
Depends on who the intended audience is. Intelligent people dismiss extreme language, but then intelligent people should be able to already have comprehended what she's saying. Some people can only be reached through emotive rhetoric.
I specifically asked you about the GOP members testifying. And just now narrowed it to Bowers.
You dodged every direct question.
Yeah, but those are likely already Trump supporters and nothing will ever change their minds.
Sad, but most likely true.
I see her as a classic RINO myself.
In contrast, I see her as one of the few holding true to the principles of the GOP.
Some irrelevant twat whose father got use into a winless war.
Deuteronomy 24:16
“Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.
This will be found in the fiction section in Barnes and Nobles.
Still trying to cash in on her hatred of Trump. I have a feeling we will soon be inundated with quotes from her book that some folks will tout as fact.
So it's just another day ending in "Y".
That would be correct
What, specifically, is the fiction?
“What, specifically, is the fiction?”
Always wondered how ‘flat earthers’ could justify such a ridiculous claim in the face of overwhelming evidence. Well, fast forward a millennium or two and here we are:
“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.” ~ Ayn Rand