House Republican Conference Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) said Tuesday that the GOP must “make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy,” warning that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol cannot by “minimized or trivialized.”
What are the details?
Speaking as the No. 3 Republican in the House, Cheney addressed the Capitol siege during an interview with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, saying, “It’s very important for us to ignore the temptation to look away. It’s very important, especially for us as Republicans, to make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy.”
“You saw symbols of Holocaust denial, for example, at the Capitol that day,” Cheney continued. “You saw the Confederate flag being carried through the rotunda, and I think we as Republicans in particular, have a duty and an obligation to stand against that, to stand against insurrection.”
The congresswoman, who survived a vote threatening to boot her from leadership after she voted to impeach President Donald Trump for allegedly inciting an insurrection, also took aim at the former president in her remarks.
According to The Hill‘s dictation, Cheney said:
“[It’s] incumbent upon everybody who takes an oath of office and swears to protect and defend the Constitution that we recognize what happened on Jan. 6, that we commit ourselves that it must never happen again, that we recognize the damage that was done by the president, President Trump, saying that somehow the election was stolen, making those claims for months and summoning the mob and provoking them then in the attack on the Capitol. And also, and very importantly, in refusing, despite multiple requests from people to ask him to stop what was happening to ask him to stop the violence to protect the Capitol to protect the counting of electoral votes — he didn’t do so.”
The New York Times reported that Cheney also blasted Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, saying the ideas behind his agenda were “just as dangerous today as they were in 1940 when isolationists launched the America First movement to appease Hitler and prevent America from aiding Britain in the fight against the Nazis.”
She added, “Isolationism was wrong and dangerous then and it is wrong and dangerous now.”
Cheney was the only member of Republican leadership to vote for impeaching Trump during his second impeachment by the House. She was joined by Democrats and nine other House GOP members. The subsequent Senate trial ended in acquittal of the former president with the split upper chamber voting 57-43 in favor of conviction, short of the 67-vote threshold.
Several Republican lawmakers who voted for impeaching Trump over the Jan. 6 riot — including Cheney — have been censured by their own state parties for condemning the former president. All have brushed off calls to resign over their votes.
During the Reagan Foundation sit-down, the interviewer noted that in November, one of Cheney’s colleagues likened her to the late Lady Margaret Thatcher. The interviewer said, “If these past few months have proven anything, it’s that Congresswoman Cheney certainly has the resolve, fortitude, and conviction of a 21st Century Iron Lady.”