Cheney embraces her role in inquiry
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is highlighting her role as the top Republican on the Jan. 6 committee in a closing ad for her all- butdoomed reelection campaign, as polls show her trailing her Trumpbacked opponent, Harriet Hageman, days before the primary.
But the nearly 2K- minute ad released online Thursday appeared aimed as much at a national audience as at the Republican primary voters in Wyoming who will decide the fate of Cheney, the state’s lone member of the House.
“The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious,” Cheney says as the ad opens. “It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”
Cheney, who has been vilified by the former president and many of his supporters, defended the work of the House committee investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol and efforts by Trump to overturn the 2020 election.
Cheney, vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, has acknowledged her political peril. A poll by the University of Wyoming showed Cheney trailing Hageman by nearly 30 points.
She is the last of the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment to stand before voters in a primary this year. Three have lost: Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina and Peter Meijer of Michigan. Two survived their primaries, and four declined to seek another term.
Titled “The Great Task,” the ad is being promoted on social media but is not appearing on television, according to Jeremy Adler, a campaign spokesperson for Cheney.
In the ad, Cheney described Trump’s false claims of election fraud as his legacy and said that the nation has an obligation to hold those responsible for fomenting violence.
“History has shown us over and over again how these types of poisonous lies destroy free nations,” Cheney said of those insisting that Trump won the election. “No one who understands our nation’s laws, no one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our Constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great republic.”
Cheney did not mention Hageman by name in her ad but drew a comparison between her opponents in Wyoming and electiondenying candidates across the nation. Last week, Hageman repeated Trump’s false claim that the election was rigged.