If former President Donald Trump is selected as the Republican contender for president in 2024, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has vowed to repudiate the GOP and quit the organization altogether.
According to the Washington Examiner, Cheney made the remarks to Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith at a Saturday event at the newspaper’s annual festival when she was asked if she would still support the Republican Party regardless of the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
A Trump-backed opponent defeated the Wyoming lawmaker, a steadfast conservative, by a significant margin in the House GOP primary last month.
Republican voters and operatives turned against her anti-Trump attitude, which arose from his attempts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election and grew into a sour GOP rivalry, leading to her defeat.
“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump — I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he’s not the nominee,” Cheney told Smith. “And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
.@Liz_Cheney says if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024, she will not be a Republican. #TribFest22 pic.twitter.com/3PXuOTBTDy
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 25, 2022
The departing lawmaker maintained her commitment to preventing the former president from ever returning to the Oval Office but declined to provide a direct response when asked by Smith if she would think about running for president to avoid a second Trump term.
“I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office,” Cheney replied coyly.
Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican and the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, was a steadfast supporter of the 45th president. Following the Capitol incident on January 6, she severed ties with Trump after he started contesting the outcome of the 2020 election. She later openly criticized him.
In February 2021, Cheney’s most devoted legislative backers made an attempt to have her removed from her leadership role as chair of the House GOP Conference, but they were unsuccessful. In the following months, her standing with GOP colleagues declined as they grew impatient with her ongoing criticism of the former president and her backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Jan. 6 commission.
Members ultimately removed Cheney from her post in May of that year, and the Wyoming Republican — in defiance of objections from GOP leadership — joined Pelosi’s House select committee. These cautions followed Pelosi’s rejection of the committee nominees proposed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a decision Cheney endorsed despite it being unprecedented.
The former president and his friends began working to support her main rival, conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman, as her notoriety as an anti-Trump activist grew, especially with the extensive coverage of the select committee hearings on Jan. 6.