Former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney will speak May 7 at the Norfolk Forum.
She’s a three-term member of the House of Representatives and rose to the No. 3 leadership position as Chair of the House Republican Caucus – until Jan. 6, 2021.
She voted to impeach former President Donald Trump and was stripped of her party position, then lost a 2022 primary race to a candidate supported by Trump.
Cheney’s been awarded for publicly criticizing Trump and his impact on the Republican Party and continues to speak out against the former president.
She spoke to WHRO’s Doug Boynton ahead of her Norfolk appearance.
Doug Boynton: You will be a Norfolk presumably at the invitation of the Norfolk Forum, but you've been traveling and speaking in many places around the country. What are you hearing in your travels about November?
Liz Cheney: I'm hearing from people all across the country and, and thousands of them, that they understand how important this election is. I think that there's a real hunger that people feel for our politics to reflect the seriousness and the substance of the issues we're facing.
People understand the gravity, the seriousness, of the potential for a second Trump term and the danger of that. And I think it's there really is just a sense … they know the nation faces big issues, both here at home and also internationally, and they want elected officials, they want leaders, who are going to, frankly, act like adults and provide the kind of leadership that is worthy of the nation and up to facing the challenges that we face.
Doug Boynton: Last week, the former president would not commit to accepting results of the 2024 election. (What is) your reaction to that?
Liz Cheney: We've seen the same thing from him again, and again, and again. He's not hiding what he would do if he were reelected. He has attempted to really tear down our democratic process.
I always think about the fact that the very things that our adversaries say about democracy, the things that the Chinese Communist Party, for example, says about our democracy are the same things that Donald Trump says about our democracy.
We've never before had a president of either party who refused to guarantee the peaceful transition of power. Now, facing this situation with a president who won't respect the sanctity of our election process and who continues to lie, I think it's just one more example of why he can't be reelected.
It’s important for people to look back and remember what we showed during the January 6 committee hearings, which is that he knows what he's saying isn't true. Every one of the top leadership of his campaign, the top lawyers in the White House, the top lawyers in the Justice Department … we have very specific days and times when they told him that each of the very specific claims he was making were just simply false. And yet he went out and said it anyway. So it's more of the same lies and I think that we need to hold him accountable. And we also need to hold accountable elected officials who are repeating the lies, repeating the claims, and they too know that these claims are false.
D.B: We keep hearing that many Republicans in Congress privately would disparage the former president, and yet support him and the movement publicly. Congressman (Adam) Kinzinger has talked about threats to him and his family. What part does fear making that decision to support the movement and the former president?
L.C: Such an important question. I think we're absolutely are in a situation where the former president is attempting to use the threat of violence, attempting to use fear to get people to be quiet or to convince people that they shouldn't oppose him.
I certainly had members of Congress say very directly to me that they believed, for example, he should be impeached, but they were afraid of the threat of violence against their family if they took such a public stand in voting to impeach Donald Trump after January 6.
And I think, again, this is a place where we really can find and should find bipartisan agreement that violence doesn't have any role in our politics. It just can't. We've had in the past, obviously, different groups that might have tried to use violence, threats, intimidation, but we've never had a president doing it. We've never had a president, a nominee of one of our major parties as we do now, attempting to do it.
You see the same thing in the same way that he's treating the judiciary, with the threats of violence against the family members of judges, the threats against the people who will be witnesses in these trials. It just all combines to tell you that he believes he's above the law and he's willing to tear the country apart if it helps him seize power again.
D.B: What part is Russia playing in our political activities these days?
L.C: I think that's a very, very important point as well. Clearly, we saw in the 2016 election, and people ought to go back and look at the … Senate Intelligence Committee report that was done when the Republicans had the majority. This is a bipartisan report about the role of Russia in 2016, and the various specific relationships between people like Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign, and key members of the Russian intelligence operation.
We know they've played a role in the past, we know that their role extends from attempting to influence the outcome, in certain instances, to attempting to sow disagreement and dissension. You know, they've got these troll farms … where they basically pretend to be someone else online on social media platforms.
What we've seen is that in many cases, where there's real dissension going on in the country, you'll see foreign adversaries, including the Russians, try to show that decision from both sides of particular issues. I think we really need to make sure to protect ourselves from that, to be aware of that's going on. You know, there's no question.
But if you look at Donald Trump, and the extent to which he praises people like Putin, he praises people like Orbán, the far-right leader of Hungary, he refused for a long time to support aid to Ukraine. It's very clear when he does things like welcome Russia to invade our NATO allies that he has alliances and allegiances in many ways that clearly are countered to America's national interest.
Liz Cheney will speak at the Norfolk Forum at Chrysler Hall on Tuesday, May 7. Event and ticket information can be found here.
