REPUBLICANS DUMP TRUMP CRITIC CHENEY FROM TOP HOUSE POST
WASHINGTON — Republicans dumped GOP Rep. Liz Cheney from her House leadership post Wednesday 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’ll keep trying to wrench the party away from him and his “destructive lies.”
Meeting behind closed doors, GOP 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 GOP royalty.
Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has repeatedly rebuked Trump for his oft-repeated falsehood that his 2020 reelection was fraudulently stolen from him and for his encouragement of supporters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6. On Wednesday 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, R-Calif., told reporters at the White House, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.’’
But that’s precisely what Trump has been doing.
Indeed, Trump in recent weeks has only escalated his attacks on the election outcome, obsessing over a partisan Arizona audit and releasing a flurry of statements denouncing what he now calls a “fake presidential election.”
“If a thief robs a jewelry store of all of its diamonds (the 2020 presidential election), the diamonds must be returned,” he said in a statement this week.
Cheney’s ouster effectively means the GOP is setting a remarkable requirement for admission to its highest ranks: adherence to, or at least silence about, Trump’s fallacious claim about widespread voting fraud. In states around the country, officials and judges of both parties found no evidence to support his assertions.
Cheney said that the country needs a Republican Party “that is based upon fundamental principles of conservatism, and I am committed and dedicated to ensuring that that’s how this party goes forward, and I plan to lead the fight to do that.”
She added, “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
“What happened today was sad,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., another Trump critic and one of the few Republicans who have publicly defended her. “Liz committed the only sin of being consistent and telling the truth. The truth is that the election was not stolen.”
Cheney’s replacement in the party’s House leadership is expected to be Rep. Elise Stefanik of upstate New York.
Stefanik owns a more moderate voting record than Cheney but has evolved into a vigorous Trump defender who’s echoed some of his claims about widespread election cheating.