Cheney: Trump ‘does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward’

Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the highest-ranking House Republican to back former President Trump’s second impeachment, said Sunday that he does “not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.”

“We’re the party of Abraham Lincoln. We’re the party of Ronald Reagan. We have to really take a hard look at who we are and what we stand for and what we believe in,” Cheney said during an interview with host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” 

“I think when you look at both his actions leading up to what happened on Jan. 6, the fact that he was impeached in a bipartisan fashion, the fact that he lost the presidency, the fact that we lost the Senate — we have to be in a position where we can say we stand for principles, for ideals,” Cheney said. 

Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to join Democrats in voting to impeach Trump last month for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting Congress’s official Electoral College count of the presidential election affirming President Biden as the winner.

The move prompted backlash from other members of her party who later pushed for her removal as conference chairwoman. However, Cheney was able to keep her status after a 145-61 vote by the Republican conference last week. 

“Somebody who has provoked an attack on the United States Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, which resulted in five people dying, who refused to stand up immediately when he was asked and stop the violence, that is a person who does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward,” Cheney told Wallace.

Cheney was also asked by Wallace if she thinks Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) has a place in the party following criticism over some of her past controversial comments. The Wyoming Republican, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, went on further to describe her party as “the party of truth” and said the GOP needs to make sure it can “be trusted to handle the challenges this nation faces.”

“And that’s going to require us to focus on substance and policy and issues going forward, but we should not be embracing the former president,” she said. 

Her comments come as Greene has also drawn rebukes from Democrats and some Republicans for her past embrace of the QAnon conspiracy and over reports of remarks she made backing violence against Democrats.

Eleven Republicans joined House Democrats in voting 230-199 to remove the first-year representative from the House Education and Budget committees last week.

On Sunday, Wallace asked Cheney if she was bothered that there “was more open outrage among House Republicans to your vote to impeach the president, a vote of conscience, as you say, then to the years of misstatements” by Greene.

In response, Cheney said, “The things that she has said don’t have any place in our public discourse, and we as a Republican conference should deal with that issue.” 

“We should have dealt with it. That’s not something the Democrats should be addressing on the floor of the House. We should have dealt with that,” Cheney continued. 

“With respect to where we are as a party … we are the party of Lincoln. We are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust deniers or white supremacy or conspiracy theories. That’s not who we are,” she added.