Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday that Republicans in Congress cannot be trusted to defend the Constitution.
Cheney made the comment in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” while responding to remarks made by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y)
“You don’t have to take my word for the fact that you can’t count on these elected Republicans to defend the Constitution,” Cheney said. “Every time they go out and give an interview. They demonstrate it themselves.”
“You’ve had two members of Republican leadership in the House on television this morning. You’ve had Mike on, again, claiming that he has the right, individually, to decide that he’s going to throw out millions of votes and ignore the rulings of the courts,” she said. “You’ve had Elise Stefanik on this morning talking about the Jan. 6 hostages.”
Johnson, who led the effort in Congress to get Republicans to sign an amicus brief supporting Texas’ lawsuit to overturn the results of the 2020 election, defended the move in a ‘Face the Nation‘ interview. He said changing the state laws without ratification by state legislatures is a violation of the Constitution.
Cheney pushed back, describing Johnson’s position as “chilling,” noting that Trump took his claims to court more than 60 times and lost every time.
He believes that “somehow as a member of Congress, he has the right to ignore the rulings of those courts to assert–absent any fact finding–a fact that somehow he feels that something that happened was unconstitutional, and therefore, that he can throw out the votes of millions of Americans,” Cheney said. “That’s tyranny. It’s not the rule of law. It’s tyranny.”
In an interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’, Stefanik did not commit to certifying the results of the 2024 presidential election and called Jan.6 Capitol rioters “hostages.”
“It’s outrageous and it’s disgusting,” Cheney said about Stefanik calling the prisoners ‘hostages’. “And if you go and you look at what individuals have been convicted for, who are incarcerated, you’ll find it, you know, extensively, these are people who were involved in violence.”
“It’s a disgrace, and you cannot say you are a member of a party that believes in the rule of law, you cannot say you are pro-law enforcement if you then go out and you say these people are ‘hostages,’ it’s disgraceful,” Cheney added.
Cheney was ousted from House Republican leadership for criticizing Donald Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. She lost her seat in the House to Trump-endorsed candidate Harriet Hageman in the GOP primary.
