Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on Monday blasted members of her own party for what she called treating former President Donald Trump “as though he were a king” despite his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and defending him in an investigation into sensitive documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
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Cheney, perhaps her party’s most vocal critic of Trump, is vice chair of the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. She was defeated last month in a primary for Wyoming’s at-large House seat by Harriet Hageman, who Trump endorsed.
In remarks celebrating Constitution Day at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, Cheney told those in attendance that the Constitution “only survives if we recognize threats to this freedom when they arise.”
“And today, we are facing such a threat. It’s a threat we have never faced before — it’s a former president who is attempting to unravel our Constitutional Republic,” she said.
Cheney blasted Trump as “a president who has abandoned his oath,” arguing that when “men and women in positions of public trust defend the indefensible and make excuses for Donald Trump, they compromise the principles of our Democratic Republic.”
Cheney said that excusing Trump’s behavior erodes rule of law and imperils the constitutional order.
”Our constitutional system has been defended and handed down to us by every generation since 1789,” she said. “It comes to us with a duty of inheritance. It doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to our children and our grandchildren, and we must not be the generation that allows it to unravel.”
Cheney pushed back on her Republican critics who say she has abandoned conservatism by defining her conservative positions, pointing to limited government, low taxes, and a strong national defense. Cheney said she is concerned about “radical liberalism” and “wokeness.”
“But those concerns cannot justify what the Republican Party is doing now,” she said. “The means do not justify the ends.”
Cheney offered a strong condemnation of elected Republicans who have defended Trump’s actions surrounding Jan. 6 or have objected to the investigation into the documents found at Mar-a-Lago. She offered harsh comments about some House Republicans she said backed Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election and objected to the certification of the results of that election, saying one that she didn’t name complained about “the things we do for orange Jesus.”
“No office is worth holding if you enable, through your action or your inaction, the dismantling of our Republic,” she said. “Does defending Donald Trump now mean excusing obstruction of justice? How many of our elected officials today are willing to do that? Bit by bit, excuse by excuse we’re putting Donald Trump above the law. We are rendering indefensible conduct normal, legal, and appropriate — as though he were a king.”
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Cheney’s parents, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Lynn Cheney, were in attendance at the speech.
