By Jimmy Orr, Cowboy State Daily
If anyone thought U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney would back away from her criticism of former President Donald Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, they will continue to be surprised.
Cheney, the third ranking Republican in the House, isn’t going out of her way to bring up the melee which ultimately killed five people, but when asked about it, she doesn’t shy away from her opinions.
Anything but. She offers the same straightforward criticism she has offered repeatedly in the past and then lets her constituents know what she said. She was asked about it this weekend on a national Sunday morning program and she posted the clip on her Facebook page.
It was of no surprise that following the question and answer period about President Biden’s infrastructure bill on Face the Nation on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan would pivot toward the Jan. 6 riots and Cheney’s denunciation of the president.
Was it worth it for Cheney to be one of the few Republicans who stood up against the president and condemned his actions, Brennan asked.
Cheney answered by saying there needed to be a bipartisan commission to study what happened on Jan. 6 to ensure that it could not happen again.
“You just had 140 national security officials from Republican and Democratic administrations send a letter to Congress saying we need a commission,” Cheney said. “I think that’s the single most important thing we need to do to make sure that kind of attack never happens again.”
Cheney also condemned the president’s remarks at Mar-A-Lago over the weekend, when he called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, a “dumb son-of-a-bitch” and expressed disappointment that his former vice president Mike Pence didn’t do more to stop the elections from being certified.
“The former president is using the same language that he knows provoked violence on Jan. 6,” Cheney said. “We know as a party. . .we need to be focused on embracing the Constitution, not embracing insurrection.”
“The election wasn’t stolen, there was a judicial process in place. If you attack the judicial process, and you attack the rule of law, you aren’t defending the Constitution, you’re at war with the Constitution,” she said.
Brennan also gave Cheney the chance to comment over the troubles being faced by perhaps her top detractor, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is the subject of ethics and criminal investigations
But Cheney didn’t take that bait. She said the charges against Gaetz are “sickening” but passed on calling for his resignation or offering any other comment.
