Republican Representative Liz Cheney has been removed from the House Republican Conference chair position following a voice vote in a closed-door meeting in the House basement. In an interview with The Epoch Times on May 9, House Minority Leader Republican Kevin McCarthy said that Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump was not the underlying reason for setting up a vote to decide whether or not to oust her from the GOP position.
Several Republicans felt that Cheney’s comments to the media were counterproductive to the Republican Party’s efforts to win back the House in the 2022 elections. After the ousting, Trump called Cheney a “talking point for Democrats” and said that he was looking forward to watching her work as a paid contributor on CNN.
“Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being. I watched her yesterday and realized how bad she is for the Republican Party. She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our Country… She is a warmonger whose family stupidly pushed us into the never-ending Middle East Disaster, draining our wealth and depleting our Great Military, the worst decision in our Country’s history,” Trump said in a blog post.
A recent poll conducted by the Club for Growth Political Action Committee (PAC) found that the majority of voters in Wyoming hoped to replace Cheney in the next election. Her unfavorable rating of 65 percent was significantly higher than her favorable rating of 29 percent. Of the respondents, 52 percent stated that they would vote for Cheney’s opponent no matter who ran against her.
Repeated actions to oppose Trump
In February, Cheney was one of the only Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump. In a statement, she blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol building, saying that he “summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.” In a May 6 article in the Washington Post, Cheney said that Trump has “never expressed remorse” for the Jan. 6 attack and that his claims of election fraud were a “crusade to undermine the foundation” of American democracy.
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Following her expulsion, Cheney said that she would do everything in her power to ensure that former President Donald Trump “never gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” according to a tweet by CBS correspondent Vladimir Duthiers. In an interview with the New York Post in late April, Cheney stated that she was open to the idea of a 2024 White House bid.
Last year, some reports suggested that Russia had placed bounties on American forces stationed in Afghanistan, a story that was possibly a hoax according to The Daily Beast. Cheney questioned the Trump administration on the issue, which several media outlets interpreted as admonishment of the president. She went so far as to co-sponsor an amendment with a Democrat that would prevent Trump from decreasing the number of troops stationed in Afghanistan, but the amendment was not passed.
Cheney also proposed that senators who objected to the Electoral College results on Jan. 6 should not run for the GOP presidential nomination for 2024. “I do think that some of our candidates who led the charge, particularly the senators who led the unconstitutional charge, not to certify the election, you know, in my view that’s disqualifying,” she said to New York Post.
Stefanik takes on the mantle
Republican Elise Stefanik from New York was voted into the post of House Republican Conference chair on Friday morning, beating out opponent Chip Roy with a 134 to 46 vote. In a statement posted on her official Twitter account, Stefanik said that she was “honored and humbled” to serve the party, and that House Republicans are united in their fight to save the country from the “radical Socialist Democrat agenda of President Biden and Nancy Pelosi.”
In a May 10 post, Trump had extended support to “gifted communicator” Stefanik as a replacement for Cheney. A statement from the National Border Patrol Council had also announced support for Stefanik, according to a Breitbart report.
“Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is the strongest member to share and grow our message of securing our border and protecting our communities… She is one of the most ardent supporters of the Border Patrol’s mission as well as law enforcement generally,” Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council, said in the statement.
In an interview with Breitbart, Stefanik called Trump voters “critical” in the Republican bid to win the 2022 midterm elections. She pointed out that Trump had won the support of 75 million voters in the 2020 presidential race. On Jan. 6, Stefanik backed an objection during the Electoral College vote count seeking to confirm Biden as the winner of the election. She also supported the Texas lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court in December last year that sought to overturn election results in multiple states.
