Liz Cheney doesn’t appear to be done kneecapping Donald Trump. The soon-to-be former Wyoming congresswoman is mulling over a run for the White House in 2024.
“That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months. But it is something that I am thinking about,” Cheney told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie this morning on the “Today Show.”
Cheney lost her bid for the Republican nomination for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat last night, to a massively compromised Trump-backed candidate, Harriet Hageman.
It wasn’t even close – the latest numbers have Hageman at 66 percent, Cheney at 29 percent.
Cheney was first elected to the Wyoming seat in the House in 2016, winning a crowded nine-candidate race for the GOP nomination with 38.8 percent of the vote, then taking the general with more than 62 percent.
Her wins in the 2018 and 2020 generals were with her getting 63.6 percent and 68.6 percent, respectively, so what she had to say last night about how it would have been easy for her to stay the course are on point.
“I could easily have done the same again,” Cheney said in her concession speech. “The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.
“That was a path I could not and would not take.”
Notably, Cheney actually did concede, which is something that Trump still hasn’t been able to do following his 7 million-vote loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, still has five months left in her current two-year term, and thus five more months to serve as vice chair of the House Jan. 6 Committee that has been investigating the Trump-led effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In her concession speech, Cheney borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr. – “It has been said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That’s true, but only if we make it bend,” she said.
After invoking the civil rights movement, she went further back into history, to the Civil War, and the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, after which Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, whose army had just suffered more than 17,000 casualties, had a choice, Cheney said: to retreat, or to keep fighting.
“As the fires of the battles still smoldered, Grant rode to the head of the column,” Cheney said. “He rode to the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road. And there, as the men of his army watched and waited, instead of turning north, back toward Washington and safety, Grant turned his horse south toward Richmond and the heart of Lee’s army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory.”
Grant, Abraham Lincoln “and all who fought in our nation’s tragic Civil War, including my own great-great-grandfathers, saved our union,” Cheney said. “Their courage saved freedom, and if we listen closely, they are speaking to us down through generations. We must not idly squander what so many have fought and died for.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, freedom must not, cannot and will not die here,” Cheney said. “As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together – Republicans, Democrats and independents – against those who would destroy our republic. They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom. There is no greater power on this earth, and with God’s help, we will prevail.”
Looking ahead to 2024, Cheney has formed a new political action committee, the Great Task, that she said is dedicated to educating Americans about threats to democracy, and specifically opposing Trump’s quest to return to the White House for a second term.
“I think that defeating him is going to require a broad, united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents,” Cheney said.
It’s a fair question as to which party nomination Cheney would seek if she were to decide to make a run in 2024.
“I think we have to make sure that we are fighting against every single election denier,” Cheney said this morning on “Today.” “The election deniers, right now, are Republicans. And I think that it shouldn’t matter what party you are. Nobody should be voting for those people, supporting them or backing them.”
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Chris Graham
