Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump, is coming under fire from members of her own party after her tweet that the former president did not lose the election unfairly. The spat illustrates the split between Republicans loyal to Trump and those willing to criticize the former president.
“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.”
Cheney, the third most senior membership of the GOP’s House leadership, has been heavily criticized by fellow Republicans in recent months for pushing back on Trump’s nonsense claims that the election was stolen, and for her impeachment vote.
Trump-supporting representatives in Congress have been pushing for Cheney, the House Republican conference chair, to be removed from that powerful position, which could be achieved if House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy called for a vote on Cheney’s future. Shortly after her vote to impeach Trump, the Wyoming GOP had also voted to censure her.
Some Republicans, however, have come to Cheney’s defense. “Liz Cheney is a woman of strength and conscience, and she did what she thought was right, and I salute her for that,” Senator Susan Collins from Maine said on CNN this weekend.
The tension between the most-extreme and less-extreme members of the Republican party has increased in recent days, after Cheney – a member of the latter group – said those who supported the Trump-backed challenges to the certification of the 2020 election should be disqualified from becoming the 2024 Republican nominee.
Cheney’s latest refusal to lie is unlikely to go down well. Politico reported on Monday morning that there is “a coordinated effort by Kevin McCarthy to box [Cheney] out”.
