With time running out, Liz Cheney begs Republicans to reject Trump
In a flurry of appearances and commentary, former Rep. Liz Cheney has stepped up her charges against former President Donald J. Trump in a last-ditch effort to convince Republicans not to renominate him.
“Tell the world who we are with your voice. Tell them we are a good and great nation,” Ms. Cheney told primary voters in New Hampshire on Friday, in a speech at Dartmouth College’s Democracy Summit. “Show the world that we will defeat the plague of cowardice sweeping through the Republican Party.”
A day later, during the campaign, she denounced Trump’s suggestion that the Civil War could have been prevented if President Abraham Lincoln had “negotiated.”
“What part of the Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The separation part? Should Lincoln have preserved the Union? she wrote on
And in an interview On Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS News, she denounced Trump’s efforts to end or delay his criminal trials, saying he had immunity from charges related to anything he did while in office. She supported efforts to remove him from the ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
“I certainly believe that Donald Trump’s behavior has risen to that level,” she said, referring to Section 3’s disqualification of people involved in an insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it. (She made a similar comment at Dartmouth, saying, “I have no doubt that his actions clearly constituted an offense within the language of the 14th Amendment.”)
“I think there is no basis for the claim that the president of the United States is completely immune from criminal prosecution for actions in office,” she added of Trump’s calls on that front. “He’s trying to delay his trial because he doesn’t want people to see the witnesses who will testify against him,” she continued.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Ms. Cheney turned on Mr. Trump in response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. As a member of the House of Representatives, she was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him and one of two who were members of the committee that investigated the attack. She lost her 2022 Republican primary overwhelmingly.
Of all the states that hold early primaries and caucuses, New Hampshire — where Ms. Cheney spoke on Friday — is the most fertile ground for Trump opponents, thanks to voters’ moderate leanings and the fact that independents can vote in the Republican race. Mr. Trump is leading past his nearest challenger there, Nikki Haley about 13 percentage points — a large margin, but considerably smaller than the 30 or so points by which he leads Ron DeSantis in Iowa and Ms. Haley in South Carolina.
Voting begins in just a week, when Iowa Republicans hold their caucuses on January 15. Next up are the New Hampshire primaries on January 23, followed by Nevada and South Carolina in February.
Ms. Cheney told the Dartmouth audience that her own plans depended on whether Republican voters heeded her call.
As she has done on several occasions, she left open the possibility of running as a third party candidate if they nominate Mr. Trump. But at the same time, she indicated that President Biden was preferable to Mr. Trump, saying that while she disagreed with Mr. Biden on policy issues, “our nation can survive and recover from policy mistakes. We cannot recover from a president who is willing to burn the Constitution.”
“I am going to do what is most effective to ensure that Donald Trump is not elected,” she added. “I will make a decision on what that will be in the coming months as we see what happens in the Republican primaries.”
A spokesperson for Ms. Cheney did not respond to a message asking whether she planned to make an endorsement in the primary.