Being ousted from her leadership role in the House has only emboldened Rep. Liz Cheney. She is now openly defiant of Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The Wyoming Republican spoke with David Axelrod about the January 6th insurrection, the former president’s role, and the events that followed. One statement she made goes farther than anything she has said before about Trump egging on rioters:
I think what Donald Trump did is the most dangerous thing, the most egregious violation of an oath of office of any president in our history.
Cheney went on to slam McCarthy for kissing up to Trump. In mid-January, McCarthy said, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” Just a couple of weeks later he changed his tune. Rep. Cheney added:
“The idea that a few weeks after he did that, the leader of the Republicans in the House would be at Mar-a-Lago, essentially, you know, pleading with him to to somehow come back into the fold, or whatever it was he was doing, to me was inexcusable.”
According to CNN, Cheney also compared “Trump’s rhetoric to that of the Chinese Communist Party, arguing that his casting doubt on the federal election system was comparable to efforts by the group to discredit American democracy.”
“When you listen to Donald Trump talk now, when you hear the language he’s using now, it is essentially the same things that the Chinese Communist Party, for example, says about the United States and our democracy. When he says that our system doesn’t work … when he suggests that it’s, you know, incapable of conveying the will of the people, you know, that somehow it’s failed — those are the same things that the Chinese government says about us. And and it’s very dangerous and damaging … and it’s not true.”