She lost her bet against Donald Trump, but promised to do everything to remove the billionaire from the Oval Office: the elected American Liz Cheney, took the lead on Tuesday in a battle which promises to be lonely and perilous against the former president.
For having been the spokesperson for anti-Trump Republicans and the vice-president of a commission investigating her responsibility in the assault on the Capitol, the 56-year-old elected official has already been deprived of a new mandate in Congress. American.
Liz Cheney represented Wyoming, the least populated state in the country, known for its great plains, its cowboys, its oil refineries… and for having voted 70% for Donald Trump in 2020.
It doesn’t matter whether this woman, also known as the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is pro-gun or anti-abortion. In this very conservative state, she was no longer on conquered ground.
“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same thing again, ”said the parliamentarian, known for her martial, sometimes academic tone, surrounded by her relatives from her mountainous stronghold of Jackson.
“But that would have required me to support President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election,” she claimed. “It was a path I couldn’t and didn’t want to take. »
Sanctioned
After losing her primary against a protege of the tycoon, Liz Cheney has again pledged to “do everything” so that Donald Trump is never president again, even if the latter seems more than ever ready to announce a new candidacy.
Will this crusade go through a change of party? A candidacy, too, for the presidential election of 2024? Tuesday evening, the chosen one did not say more about her intentions.
But, in her fight against the exacerbated nationalism and populist rhetoric that brought the ex-president to power, Liz Cheney is for the moment very alone.
More than a year and a half after being ousted from power, Donald Trump retains an iron grip on the ‘Grand Old Party’, which has called the January 6 protests a ‘legitimate political expression’ and sanctioned Liz Cheney for her participation in the survey.
Only one other conservative, the elected Adam Kinzinger, not a candidate for re-election, had agreed to sit on this commission. Both are decked out by their colleagues with the very pejorative nickname of “RINOs”, reserved for Republicans deemed too timorous.
Liz Cheney, heiress of a traditionalist right has however in no way denied her very conservative positions.
But for supporters of Donald Trump, she represents the “backwater” of Washington denounced by the ex-president, who castigates careerist politicians with whom activists no longer identify.
“Dishonor”
The parliamentarian, from a family with a long political past, was often seen alongside her father Dick Cheney, elected from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989, before becoming Minister of Defense for George HW Bush, then Vice President of George W. Bush.
A law graduate from the University of Chicago, she joined the International Finance Corporation bank before occupying several positions at the State Department, notably on the Middle East.
Married to Philip Perry, a lawyer in a famous law firm in Washington, this mother of five children had tried her luck for a seat in the Senate in 2014, before taking in 2016 the seat once occupied by her father in the House.
During television hearings in mid-June, the elected official had already marked with her very harsh words addressed to the conservatives who continue to blindly follow Donald Trump in his battle against supposed “stolen” elections.
“Tonight, I say this to my fellow Republicans who defend the indefensible: the day will come when Donald Trump leaves, but your dishonor will remain”, she had launched, pointing out that the “defense of the American Constitution” deserved to be put in jeopardize his political career.