Four months after Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the US Capitol Building, the Republican Party has largely fallen behind the former president – except for one senior leader. One woman in Donald Trump’s party has repeatedly spoken against him – and the former president has had enough. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, voted to impeach Mr. Trump in January and has not stopped speaking out against him since, denouncing him for lying to his supporters about his election defeat.
Now she is facing the consequences.
In recent days, Mr. Trump and Ms. Cheney have escalated their public feud, and her colleagues in Congress are preparing to oust her from her role as chair of their conference. It’s a telling lesson for Republican politicians: Mr. Trump may not be president anymore, but disloyalty will still be punished.
NEVER BEEN A GREATER BETRAYAL’
In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot in January, Democrats in the House moved to impeach Mr. Trump again. About a year earlier, when Mr. Trump was first impeached for pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden, it was a partisan vote. No Republicans were in favor of it. This time, ten Republicans turned on Mr. Trump, and Ms. Cheney was quickly the most prominent name among them. She explained her decision in a statement. “On January 6, a violent mob attacked the Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop counting presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death, and destruction in the most sacred space in our republic,” Ms. Cheney said.
“Much more will become clear in the coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The president summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and let the flame of this attack. “Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. I will vote to impeach.”
From that moment onward, Ms. Cheney faced a fierce backlash from Mr. Trump’s supporters.
A swift attempt was to push her out of her job as conference chair, led by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. He even traveled to her home state of Wisconsin to campaign against her (this was before we learned Mr. Gaetz was under criminal investigation). Ms. Cheney survived, winning a secret ballot vote 145-61, though the Wisconsin Republican Party also criticized her.
At that point, she still had the public support of her party’s most senior member in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and a handful of other Republicans also criticized Mr. Trump harshly. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the former president’s actions a “disgraceful dereliction of duty”, despite voting to acquit him. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said the party “shouldn’t have followed him”. Within weeks, Mr. McConnell and Ms. Haley had backtracked, and Ms. Cheney became an increasingly lonely figure.
