Dumped Republican No. 3 remains defiant
Republicans dumped Republican Representative Liz Cheney from her House leadership post yesterday for her persistent repudiation of Donald Trump’s election falsehoods, underscoring the hold the defeated and twice-impeached former president retains on his party.
She defiantly insisted she would keep trying to wrench the party away from him and his ‘‘destructive lies’’.
Meeting behind closed doors, Republican lawmakers needed less than 20 minutes and a voice vote to oust the Wyoming congresswoman from her job as their No. 3 House leader. The banishment, urged by Trump and other top Republicans, showed his ability to upend the careers of antagonists, even those from Republican royalty.
Cheney, daughter of former vicepresident Dick Cheney, has repeatedly rebuked Trump for his oft-repeated falsehood that his 2020 re-election was fraudulently stolen from him and for his encouragement of supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6.
Yesterday, she unrepentantly lashed out anew. ‘‘If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person,’’ she told her colleagues before the vote, according to a person who provided her remarks on condition of anonymity. ‘‘You have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy.’’
Just minutes after she accused her fellow Republicans of dishonestly buttressing Trump, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters at the White House: ‘‘I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with.’’
McCarthy spoke a week after Trump released a statement saying, ‘‘The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!’’
Cheney’s critics say her offence was not her view of Trump but her persistence in publicly expressing it, undermining the unity they want party leaders to display in advance of next year’s elections, when they hope to win House control. Several also say Republican voters’ allegiance to Trump means the party’s electoral prospects without him would be dismal.
Cheney’s ouster effectively means the Republican Party is setting a remarkable requirement for admission to its highest ranks: adherence to, or at least silence about, Trump’s fallacious claim about voting fraud.