Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Sunday that she wishes she could ignore former President Trump, but cannot because he still poses a “real danger.”
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Cheney why she does not simply ignore Trump rather than attacking him.
“Well, you know, I wish we could do that Chris, but unfortunately, as I said over the course of the last several weeks, former President Trump continues to be a real danger,” Cheney responded.
“What he’s doing and what he’s saying — his claims, his refusal to accept decisions by the courts. His claims continued as recently as yesterday that somehow this election was stolen,” she said. “You know, what he’s doing is he’s causing people to believe that they can’t count on our electoral process to actually convey the will of the people.”
Cheney was ousted last week as House Republican Conference Chair, the no. 3 Republican in House leadership. On Friday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was elected to replace Cheney as GOP conference chair.
Cheney responded in the affirmative when asked whether she thinks House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Stefanik are “complicit” in Trump’s lies.
“They are, and I’m not willing to do that,” Cheney said. “I think that there are some things that have to be bigger than party, that have to be bigger than partisanship. Our oath to the Constitution is one of those.”
The congresswoman said that the last thing she told House Republicans as their conference chair was, “if they were looking for leaders who would be complicit in spreading the big lie, I wasn’t their person, that there were plenty of other people who would do that.”
“Those millions of people that you mentioned, who supported the president, have been misled. They’ve been betrayed,” Cheney said, later adding: “We’ve got to get voters back so that we can get Republicans back into position, where our positions are the ones that are in place.”
Stefanik on Friday called Trump “an important voice” in the Republican Party, a view Cheney called “wrong.”
Earlier this month, McCarthy was caught on a hot mic saying he had “had it” with Cheney and had “lost confidence” in her, adding that she had “real problems.” McCarthy predicted that she would soon face a vote to remove her as conference chair.
Hours after ousting Cheney from her leadership role on Wednesday, McCarthy denied that Republicans are questioning the results of the November election, an issue on which Cheney criticized them.
“I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with,” McCarthy told reporters.
Also last week, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) urged House Republicans to focus on combatting Democrats’ agenda instead of on internal dissension.
“We, as a conference, must remain focused on stopping Speaker Pelosi and President Biden’s socialist agenda. We stand with hard-working Americans,” Scalise wrote to fellow lawmakers on Wednesday.