Cheney Calls on Republicans to Choose Trump Or the Constitution

Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, speaks during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. Cassidy Hutchinson, who previously gave videotaped depositions offering insider details on the final days of Donald Trump's presidency, is appearing before the committee on short notice while most of Congress is on a two-week break. , Bloomberg

Billy House and Mark Niquette, Bloomberg News

Jun 29, 2022

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(Bloomberg) -- Republican Representative Liz Cheney warned Wednesday that her GOP colleagues must choose between former President Donald Trump or the Constitution, saying they cannot be loyal to both.

“We are confronting a domestic threat we have never faced before: a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our Constitutional Republic,” she said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.

Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has been one of the most vocal GOP critics of Trump. She is also the vice chair of a congressional committee investigating the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol that is conducting televised hearings.

Cheney said what is emerging from the panel’s work and its public hearings is a picture of Trump’s efforts to block Joe Biden’s presidential victory “even more chilling and threatening than we imagined.”

“And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man,” Cheney said.

“It is undeniable -- the Republican Party cannot be both loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution,” Cheney said. “We must choose.”

Cheney, Wyoming’s lone House member, appeared as part of a speaker series on the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

She hasn’t moderated her criticism of Trump and the direction of the GOP despite being ousted last year from House leadership. She now faces a daunting re-election bid with Trump’s push to defeat her in the Aug. 16 Republican primary in a state where the former president got nearly 70% of the vote in the 2020 election.

Her Trump-backed primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, is ahead in a campaign run by former Trump advisers and indirectly backed by top state GOP officials. In a twist, some of Cheney’s campaign mailings have included instructions to Democrats and other non-Republicans on how they can switch their part affiliations to vote in the GOP primary.

Hageman, in a statement responding to the speech, accused Cheney of using her congressional seat “to further her own personal war” against Trump. 

“Liz Cheney is the last one who should be giving lectures about the future of the Republican Party when she is singlehandedly trying to burn it to the ground.” Hageman said.

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