Liz Cheney promises to leave the Republican Party if Trump is the nominee in 2024

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Liz Cheney said that if Donald Trump is the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee, she will leave the Republican Party. Furthermore, she promised to campaign for Democrats running against Republican candidates who are election deniers. She delivered the news at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday.

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The Texas Tribune Festival (TribFest), an annual event hosted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan digital media outlet, was held over the weekend and featured a wide variety of speakers. Cheney was interviewed by Evan Smith, the CEO, and co-founder of The Texas Tribune.

“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he’s not the nominee,” Cheney said. “And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”

Cheney, who lost the Republican primary in Wyoming, said that doing everything in her power to prevent Trump from being the nominee in 2024 includes a possible run for the nomination herself. She still considers herself a Republican and supports conservative policy. She will continue as co-chair of the January 6 committee until she leaves Congress in January. Liz Cheney voted for Trump’s policies well over 90% of the time but she broke away from him after the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. Since then she has been obsessed with keeping Trump from running for president again. Though chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) indicated that the committee hearing this week will be the last one, Cheney said she expects more. She also indicated that she doesn’t really want Republicans to take back the majority in the House. When Republicans do take back the House in November, she doesn’t think Kevin McCarthy should be the Speaker of the House.

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Cheney excoriated Trump for his failure to call off rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She said without equivocation that any decision by the investigating committee about whether there should be criminal prosecution would be unanimous across the seven Democrats and two Republicans. She did not say whether the committee would decide in favor of a criminal prosecution.

“One of the things that has surprised me the most about my work on this committee is how sophisticated the plan was that Donald Trump was involved in and oversaw every step of the way,” Cheney said. “It was a multipart plan that he oversaw, he was involved in personally and directly.

“While leaders in Congress were begging him, ‘Please, tell the mob to go home,’ Donald Trump wouldn’t,” Cheney said. “And just set the politics aside for a minute and think to yourself, ‘What kind of human being does that?’”

The committee is gearing up to wrap up its work in the coming weeks and is slated to meet this Wednesday for another public hearing, offering no details about what will be discussed then. She said next week’s hearing is unlikely to be the committee’s last, despite committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., suggesting the opposite earlier this week.

She will campaign for Democrats, if necessary, in order to help defeat Republican candidates who question the results of the last presidential election. That includes Kari Lake, the Republican candidate in the Arizona gubernatorial race.

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Cheney also said she will campaign for Democrats to ensure that Republican candidates who promote election lies do not get elected.

Cheney was talking about the Arizona gubernatorial race, and how she will work to ensure that GOP nominee Kari Lake, the former television journalist who has become a leading voice behind Trump’s lies about election fraud, does not get elected.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Kari Lake is not elected,” Cheney said.

When asked if that includes campaigning for Democrats, Cheney said, “Yes.”

Liz Cheney’s political career is over. Whatever clout she thinks she has is minimal at best and does not go further than those who consider themselves as NeverTrump conservatives. She couldn’t even win her own primary race in deep red Wyoming, how does she think she will run for president if Trump enters the race? Democrats will only support her until they have their own nominee and then they’ll cast her aside. She is only useful for them while they create chaos in Republican primaries. The primaries are over and now the only way she can stay relevant is to support Democrat candidates. Cheney cannot authentically claim to support conservative polices while campaigning for Democrats whose policies have created crisis after crisis since Biden took office.

Kari Lake responded to Cheney’s statements on Sunday.

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Lake told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo that “the people of Wyoming can’t stand” Cheney and she was sure “the people of Arizona don’t like Liz Cheney” either.

“That might be the biggest, best gift I have ever received,” Lake said of Cheney’s comments. “The Republican Party, the new Republican Party, is the party of we, the people. It is no longer the party of warmongers.”

“Liz Cheney probably should change her voter registration. Turns out she really is a Democrat after all,” the GOP candidate added.

Lake’s Democrat opponent, Katie Hobbs, refuses to debate her. She calls Lake a conspiracy theorist. This race will likely be a squeaker in November. Real Clear Politics currently has Lake up by 0.5 points.

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