Former Rep. Liz Cheney warned Americans that voting for former President Donald Trump could be the end of democratic elections in the U.S.
“A Trump vote is not acceptable,” Ms. Cheney said on NBC’s “Today Show” Monday. “I hope there are options and alternatives that reflect the important challenges that we’re facing, and that reflect leadership to meet those challenges, but that choice can never be Donald Trump because a vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in.”
She said if Mr. Trump won a second term he would refuse to leave office after the four years are up.
“There’s no question. Absolutely. He’s already done it once,” she said. “He’s already attempted to seize power, and he was stopped, thankfully, and for the good of the nation and the republic. But he said he would do it again. He’s expressed no remorse for what he did.”
She has said before that the U.S. “is sort of sleepwalking into dictatorship.”
“People who say ‘well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances’ don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted,” she said on CBS Sunday morning.
The Wyoming Republican has been promoting her new book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning.” In the book, she talks about Mr. Trump’s impact on the Republican Party and about the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
“I don’t say that lightly, and I think it’s heartbreaking that that’s where we are, but people have to recognize that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote against the Constitution,” she said on the NBC show.
Ms. Cheney, a longtime Republican, has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump. She said on the show that she “will do whatever it takes to make sure that Donald Trump is defeated in 2024.”
Ms. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was one of the nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump a week after the Jan. 6 riot. She also served as vice chair on the House select committee that investigated the riot and concluded it was an attempted coup by Mr. Trump.
She lost her election last year to a Trump-backed candidate in the GOP primary, Harriet Hageman, who went on to win the seat.
“It’s painful for me as someone who, you know, has spent their whole life in Republican politics, who grew up as Republican, to watch what’s happening to my party,” she said, “and to watch the extent to which Donald Trump himself has, you know, basically determined that the only thing that matters is him, his power, his success.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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