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Liz Cheney Blasts Republicans After Big Loss in Wyoming Primary

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Rep. Liz Cheney appears to have latched on to the role of sore loser as she ripped into her own party following a massive GOP primary loss on Tuesday.

In an appearance Wednesday morning on NBC’s “Today” show, Cheney reflected on her loss to Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman, who was backed early on by former President Donald Trump, while also ripping her party and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for aligning with the former president publicly following the Jan. 6 riot after criticizing Trump in private.

“I think what we have seen, not just in Wyoming but across the country, is that Donald Trump has betrayed Republican voters. He’s lied to them. Those who support him have lied to them. And they’re using people’s patriotism against them. They’re preying on people’s patriotism,” she claimed, according to the UK’s Daily Mail.

“This is a great, a special, exceptional nation, and we need leaders who have reverence to our Constitution, are faithful to our Constitution, and will do what’s required to abide by our oath no matter whether it’s politically convenient. Kevin McCarthy does not fit that bill,” she added.

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The outlet continued:

Cheney’s rising star within the House GOP was derailed when she broke from her party to criticize Trump and ultimately voted to impeach him over the January 6 Capitol riot – which she took a lead role in investigating on the bipartisan House select committee.

For that work she had been censured by the Republican National Committee, renounced by the Wyoming GOP, and lost her role as the No. 3 leader in the House to pro-Trump Rep. Elise Stefanik.

During her concession speech Tuesday evening, Cheney reflected about how she won her last election by a 73-point margin and how “I could easily have done the same again.”

“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,” she said.

“That was a path I could not and would not take,” she said.

She made similar remarks during her Today show interview.

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“It was clear how that path would go,” she said, regarding her decision to criticize Trump following the Jan. 6 riot and blame him for the incident before joining a Democrat-controlled committee to investigate that Republicans have called little more than an exercise in overt partisanship. “But that path would have required that I accept, that I embrace, that I perpetuate the big lie” about the 2020 election, she added.

Cheney next appeared to take verbal shots at Trump’s supporters.

“It was clear how that path would go. But that path would have required that I accept, that I embrace, that I perpetuate the big lie,” she told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. “I think that is a red line. I don’t think anybody should be supporting those people. Republicans shouldn’t be supporting them.”

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“I think the Republican party today is in very bad shape, and I think that we have a tremendous amount of work to do,’ Cheney continued, adding that it’s a party that has “embraced Donald Trump, embraced his cult of personality, is looking the other way as he continues to do things like put out the names of FBI agents.”

She broke again from the majority of her party when she accused Trump of putting out “lies” about last week’s FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate; most Republicans have blasted the raid as another politially motivated exercize by the Biden administration.

“Just in the last few days, when he knows that our law enforcement is the target of violence, put out the lies that he has put out in the last few days about what happened in the search warrant execution at Mar-a-Lago,” she said. “Every Republican, every American should reject those. And I certainly know there are millions of Republicans and Americans across this country who will.”

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