Former GOP House speaker Paul Ryan will host a fundraising event for Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), who is facing backlash over her criticism of former President Trump in the wake of the Capitol riot and her vote to impeach him.
Ryan will host the virtual fundraising event for Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, at 11a.m. on March 25. Donors have been asked to contribute $5,800 to co-host and $2,900 to attend, according to the invite obtained by Politico.
Since her vote to impeach Trump during his second impeachment trial last month, Cheney is now facing two Republican primary challengers, Wyoming State Representative Chuck Gray and State Senator Anthony Bouchard. Cheney is up for reelection in 2022.
“It’s time for a leader who actually listens to the hard-working people of Wyoming, and not to the D.C. elitists,” Gray wrote in a Thursday tweet.
“The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment. And it doesn’t bend to partisanship; it doesn’t bend to political pressure. It’s the most important oath that we take,” Cheney said of her decision to break from the party line and join Democrats and nine other Republicans in voting for impeachment.
“We should not be embracing the former president,” she said when asked whether Trump should be a standard-bearer for the GOP.
The Wyoming Republican Party early last month voted to censure Cheney over her impeachment vote. Also last month, House Republicans voted to keep Cheney as House Republican Conference chair in a 145–61 vote, overcoming a push by some House Republicans to oust her from her role as the third-ranking member of House GOP leadership.
Paul, who represented Wisconsin in the House for two decades, initially criticized Trump fiercely while he was running for president, but the two later developed a largely cooperative relationship, working to enact Trump’s agenda.
When Ryan announced in April 2018 that he would not seek reelection, he received generous praise from Trump, who called him a “truly good man” with a “legacy of achievement that nobody can question.”
However, Trump’s tone later soured when Ryan was quoted in a book deriding the president, saying that Trump “didn’t know anything about government” and that he “wanted to scold him all the time.”
Trump subsequently declared that Ryan had “poor leadership” and called his achievement record “atrocious.”
Ryan’s successor, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), has since attempted to placate all sides, visiting Trump at his Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago at the end of January in an attempt to persuade the former president not to take revenge on the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated incorrectly that Wyoming State Senator Anthony Bouchard announced his primary challenge against Rep. Liz Cheney on Thursday, March 4. Bouchard announced his candidacy in January.