Rep. Liz Cheney made clear Monday that she will continue to publicly denounce former president Donald Trump over his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, imperiling her position in House Republican leadership as GOP members continue to rally around Trump.
House Republican leaders as well as some rank-and-file members have said that Cheney’s statements in recent weeks about Trump are a distraction and that she should focus on issues that unite the party.
But Cheney (R-Wyo.) brushed aside those warnings Monday after Trump issued a statement attempting to commandeer the term “Big Lie,” commonly used to refer to the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, by asserting that the term should now refer to President Biden’s election victory.
Cheney quickly condemned Trump’s comment as well as anyone who supports his statements about the election.
“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney tweeted. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
Hours later, Trump released another statement, this time attacking Cheney by calling her a “big-shot warmonger” and claiming that people in Wyoming “never liked her much.”
Cheney has said challenging Trump’s false statements about the election is an issue of principle, but she has increasingly angered her GOP colleagues and faced renewed calls to step down from the No. 3 leadership post in the conference….
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, according to CNN.
“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-Wis.), according to the network. “It is a threat to democracy. What he did on January 6 is a line that cannot be crossed.”