Although she lost the electoral battle against Donald Trump , Congresswoman Liz Cheney said Tuesday that she will lead a probably lonely and dangerous fight to prevent the billionaire from returning to the Oval Office of the White House.
Cheney’s loss to Trump-backed Harriet Hageman marks a major victory for the former president in his campaign to unseat Republicans who supported his impeachment after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol building last year.
With 99% of the ballots counted in Wyoming, Hageman led the Republican field with 66.3% of the vote, followed by Cheney with 28.9%, according to Edison Research, an election monitoring firm.
“Two years ago I won this primary with 73% of the votes. I could have easily done the same thing again,” said the congresswoman known for her martial and sometimes scholarly tone, surrounded by her neighbors in the mountainous city of Jackson.
Conceding defeat, Cheney—a fierce critic of Trump who has played a leading role in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on Capitol Hill—said she was unwilling to “endorse President Trump’s lie about the election of 2020” to win a primary.
“It would have required me to allow their efforts to undo our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and did not want to take,” he told supporters.
Being a spokesperson for the anti-Trump Republicans and co-chair of the parliamentary committee investigating her responsibility in the assault on the Capitol on January 6 deprived her of a new mandate in the US Congress.
In Parliament, Cheney, 56, represented Wyoming, the least populous state in the country, known for its plateaus where several cowboy movies were recorded, and because 70% of the votes in the 2020 presidential elections went to Trump.
It didn’t matter that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter was outspokenly anti-abortion or pro-gun rights.
against trump
After losing the primary against a close friend of Trump, Cheney promised to do “whatever it takes” to prevent the tycoon from becoming president again, when he seems closer to announcing a new candidacy every day.
Will this crusade go through a change of party? By running for the 2024 presidential election? The congresswoman did not give more indications about it on Tuesday.
But in her crusade against the heightened nationalism and populist rhetoric that brought Trump to power, Cheney is so far alone.
A year and a half after being defeated at the polls, Trump maintains a tight grip on the Republican Party, which recently called the Jan. 6 protests “legitimate political expression” and sanctioned Cheney for participating in the investigation.
Only one other Republican, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who is not running for re-election, agreed to serve on this commission.
His companions refer to both with the very pejorative nickname of “RINOs” (“who are Republicans only in name”).
What is the ideology of Liz Cheney
Cheney comes from a traditionalist right and has in the past campaigned against same-sex marriage despite having a lesbian sister. In addition, he does not deny his very conservative positions, especially in the economic field.
But to Trump supporters, he embodies the Washington elite reviled by the former president, lashing out at career politicians activists no longer identify with.
Origin and political career of Liz Cheney
The congresswoman, from a family with a long political past, used to accompany her father Dick Cheney, who was elected to Congress from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989, before becoming Secretary of Defense to George HW Bush and later Vice President to George W. Bush. .
A law graduate from the University of Chicago, she joined the International Finance Corporation bank before holding various positions in the State Department, especially in the Middle East.
She is married to Philip Perry, a lawyer at a famous Washington law firm, and they have five children. In 2014 he tried his luck for a seat in the Senate and in 2016 he held his father’s seat in the House of Representatives.
Until in June, the congresswoman told her conservative colleagues that they expose themselves “to disgrace” if they blindly follow Trump in his crusade against the elections that he claims, without evidence, they stole from him.
“Tonight I say to my fellow Republicans” that “the day will come when Donald Trump will leave, but his disgrace will remain,” she then released them, very seriously, pointing out that the “defense of the US Constitution” deserved to put his career in the balance.
run for president
Cheney said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” show that he “will do whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office” and that he is considering running for president.
“It’s something I’m thinking about and I’ll make a decision in the next few months,” she told “Today” when asked about a candidacy, adding that she has a lot of work to do with the committee investigating the Capitol storming.
“I think Donald Trump continues to represent a very serious threat and risk to our republic. And I think defeating him is going to take a broad, united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents. And that’s what I intend to be a part of,” he said.
With information from AFP and Reuters
