She's toast: Liz Cheney likely to lose her House GOP leadership role in vote next week
New editorial in WaPo makes clear Cheney will continue to denounce President Donald Trump over what she calls "false claims" the 2020 election was stolen
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has virtually assured the loss of her #3 GOP leadership role in the House by saying President Donald Trump is telling “The Big Lie” in continuing to say the 2020 election was stolen. Trump endorsed Rep. Lynn Stefanik to replace Cheney in a vote coming up next week. (Photos: Dan Stier, Amy Welch/Washington Examiner)
Calling Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) a “warmonger” Wednesday, President Donald Trump fired back at the top GOP woman in party leadership after she claimed he is perpetuating “The Big Lie” in saying the 2020 election was stolen. She wrote the slam in an editorial in The Washington Post Monday.
Trump also endorsed Rep. Lynn Stefanik (R-NY) to replace Cheney as GOP Chairwoman in what amounts to a vote of confidence next Wednesday. Trump released a statement on Monday morning through his Save America PAC proclaiming that the presidential election “will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!” This did not sit well with Cheney, who fired back on Twitter less than an hour later before the editorial was published.
The increasingly embattled Cheney survived a move to oust her earlier this year after she voted to impeach President Donald Trump, but a new round of anti-Trump comments, as well as her foreign and domestic policy positions, have put her further at odds with the GOP conference, Republicans told the Washington Examiner.
“She’s out of sync,” a Republican leadership source told America’s Conservative Voice (ACV) Wednesday. “She’s not helping Republicans win back the House.”
Cheney has refused to back down despite the widespread opposition from her party, however. Cheney’s unabashed opposition to Trump has attracted media attention, and it stole the unity narrative at the GOP issues conference in Orlando, where House Republicans met to plot an agenda and pathway to regaining the majority in 2022.
She told reporters in Orlando that Trump was not the leader of the Republican Party and that those Republicans who voted against certifying the presidential election for Biden had disqualified themselves from the 2024 presidential field.
McCarthy wasn’t thrilled.
“Any member who is not focused on policy and making sure the next century is the American century is kind of wasting their time,” McCarthy told reporters there.
Cheney has become the face of the very small anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party since she voted for his second impeachment earlier this year. She was joined by nine other House Republicans and seven Senate Republicans. There may be a few more Republicans who either want Trump to reduce or eliminate his visibility in party politics, but the vast majority of GOP legislators and party members would be thrilled if he announced he was running again.
Cheney led a cabal of 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump in his second such trial before the Senate in January. That vote put Cheney at a 14% approval rating in her home state of Wyoming. (Photo Montage: KMIZ Fox22/Columbia, Missouri)
That puts Cheney in a swiftly shrinking minority that do not seem to recognize they have no hope of being the majority.
Cheney also angered members of the largest House GOP faction, the Republican Study Committee, by criticizing a key party framework memo authored by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN — who briefly considered running against Cheney before deciding he would not. That brief promoted a party allegiance to Trump and the accomplishments of his presidency in a bid to appeal to the working-class voter.
Cheney characterized the memo as “neo-Marxist,” which angered not only Banks but the many lawmakers in the RSC whose feedback helped shape the memo, a GOP source said. On Monday, Cheney told a closed-door conference hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute at Sea Island, Ga., that the party cannot accept the “poison” that the election was stolen..
“We can’t whitewash what happened on January 6 or perpetuate Trump’s big lie,” she said while being interviewed at the conference by former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI). “It is a threat to democracy. What he did on January 6 is a line that cannot be crossed.”
The false narrative of a legal, clean election has been forced down the gullets of a gullible public by a corrupt media and Fascist Democrats. The fraud reports, affidavits, and statements from election security and forensic experts point to an inescapable conclusion: The election was, in reality, stolen.
We at ACV, however, are not confident that anything will be ever done about it. It is up to Trump supporters to return him to the office of which he was robbed — and not coincidentally prove Cheney and her ilk a pack of liars.
McCarthy, a staunch Trump ally, said in Orlando that the GOP conference would decide Cheney’s future in leadership and signaled her comments about Trump and those who support him were unwelcome.
On Tuesday, McCarthy told Fox News fellow Republicans are concerned about Cheney’s ability to “carry out the job” of conference chairwoman, which he said is a position designed to unify the conference and enable the GOP to win back the majority.
President Trump returned fire on Liz Cheney Wednesday as the numbers stack up against her, both in the House where is likely to be bounced from GOP leadership next week, and in Wyoming where her approval numbers have flat-lined since January. (Photo: Kim Wayans/Reuters)
As for President Trump, it was the second time he has criticized Cheney in the past three days.
On Monday, the former president said in a statement, "Heartwarming to read new polls on big-shot warmonger Liz Cheney of the great State of Wyoming. She is so low that her only chance would be if vast numbers of people run against her which, hopefully, won't happen. They never liked her much, but I say she'll never run in a Wyoming election again!"
It is likely Cheney is fighting a losing battle against a . President Trump has not been very circumspect about his intentions for 2024, strongly hinting he will be a candidate to unseat Joe Biden. He teased “a certain announcement” that would make people “very, very happy” in a Tuesday interview.
“I’m absolutely enthused. I look forward to doing an announcement at the right time,” Trump said about his 2024 election plans. Trump would enter the Republican primary field as a prohibitive favorite if he does run for president again.
“It’s very early, but I think people are going to be very, very happy … when I make a certain announcement,” Trump continued. “For campaign finance reasons, you really can’t do it too early because it becomes a whole different thing. Otherwise, I’d give you an answer that I think you’d be very happy with. So we are looking at that very, very seriously. And all I’ll say is, stay tuned.”
Trump previously suggested that he might run, telling Newsmax in February that he was “looking at poll numbers that are through the roof.” Trump won the 2021 CPAC straw poll in February with 55 percent support while Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finished second, with 21 percent.
The former president’s entry into the race could freeze the field. Other potential candidates include former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and U.N. Ambassador under Trump, Nikki Haley. She has said she will not run if Trump gets into the race.