Is Liz Cheney really thinking about running for president in 2024?

Liz Cheney was widely seen as a Republican superstar in the making, perhaps even a future president, before she was elected to Congress in 2016. Ms. Cheney never discouraged the speech, but Donald J. Trump destroyed her bright future after she voted to impeach him in 2021 and became a pariah in the GOP

While Ms. Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, has pledged to do “everything I can” to ensure Trump never returns to the White House, she has suggested she has not given up on her own presidential ambitions. In interviews with The Washington Post and USA Today ahead of Tuesday’s release of her new book:Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” Ms. Cheney raised the possibility that a third party would challenge Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

“Several years ago, I wouldn’t have considered a third-party run,” Ms. Cheney said told The Post’s Maeve Reston. But, she said, “democracy is in danger,” both in the United States and abroad. Ms Cheney said she would make a final decision in the coming months.

Her comments echoed the answer she gave to CNN’s Jake Tapper in October about whether she was ruling out a presidential candidate. “No, I’m not,” she said.

Ms. Cheney declined to comment to The New York Times.

Despite her comments, there is no evidence that Ms. Cheney has taken steps to go beyond keeping her options open while maximizing her relevance on a book promotion tour.

She has not hired any campaign staff. Close associates of hers say they are not aware of any polling, signature gathering or related efforts associated with building a third-party campaign. Her political action committee, the Big Task, has been at a standstill since the 2022 midterm elections, when Ms. Cheney supported the efforts of some Democratic candidates against Republicans who claimed the 2020 election was stolen.

In the meantime, time is running out. Filing deadlines to appear on the ballots in 2024 start as early as March in some states. Although they expressed his openness to USA Today To “create a new party” that could replace a Trump-centric Republican Party, such an effort would require the kind of money, personnel and legal maneuvers that would take months, if not years, to produce.

A presidential candidate in Cheney is also likely to undermine her mission to thwart Trump’s 2024 ambitions, a close friend said, because her candidacy could siphon some votes away from President Biden. According to the friend, Ms. Cheney’s comment to The Post that she would not have considered a third party until recently seemed to have more to do with her long loyalty to the Republican Party and less to do with a new urge to run as an independent steps.

Among Beltway conservatives, including lobbyists and military hawks, Ms. Cheney remains a popular figure and presidential wife. Lawmakers and staffers who served with Ms. Cheney on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol privately wondered whether the vice president prioritized her ambitions over a comprehensive investigation into the riot at the Capitol. For Trump’s allies, the question naturally answered itself.

If the current moment suggests anything beyond the desire to sell books, it reminds us that Liz Cheney, like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has long understood the importance of political influence in advancing her core beliefs. For the time being, she does not hold a position and has no place in any of the major parties. But she has her voice.