U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s lightning-rod Republican congresswoman, has upped the ante on her campaign to oppose former President Donald Trump, saying if the GOP selects Trump as its 2024 nominee for president she’ll secede from the party.
“If he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican,” she said during a Saturday night interview on stage at a public policy festival sponsored by the left-of-center Texas Tribune.
Tribune CEO Evan Smith nodded his approval at her answer as she reiterated her mission to thwart the former president from having a second term.
“I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office,” she said.
In the nearly hourlong interview with Smith, Cheney doubled-down on her conservative values and background, pointing out that before the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack that she supported most of Trump’s policies and platforms.
She remained cryptic on the possibility of running for president herself in 2024 while expressing concern that Republican majority in the U.S. House could give Trump power through conservative members like Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
In talking about her involvement in the Jan. 6 Committee investigating the Capitol attack, of which she’s vice chair and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee, Cheney said the effort has been exhaustive and thorough in its probe.
She also said that if Trump were to testify before the committee, there would be no deals and that “any interaction” the former president has with the committee “will be under oath and subject to penalty of perjury.”
Cheney suffered a landslide loss in last month’s Wyoming Republican primary to retain her House seat to Trump-backed attorney Harriet Hageman.
