Republican Liz Cheney is “laser-focused” on a resounding defeat of GOP nominee Donald Trump in this year’s presidential race.
“Donald Trump demonstrates every day that he lost his marbles,” she said.
“I hope that it is such a definitive victory that there isn’t a question,” Cheney told about 1,000 people Sunday at her Purdue Northwest Sinai Forum appearance at Blue Chip Casino’s Stardust Event Center in Michigan City.
Partisan politics need to take a back seat this election, she said.
“We don’t get the opportunity to debate tax policy or national security policy if we elect something who gets to torch the Constitution,” Cheney said.
Cheney was vice chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Cheney spoke at length on what she saw and learned about Jan. 6, 2021.
“When Donald Trump woke up that morning, his intent, despite knowing that he lost the election, that he would remain in office,” she said.
“We know now that Donald Trump put in place a multipart plan to attempt to seize power.”
The plan involved pressuring state legislatures and others to overturn votes, pressuring the Department of Justice and others, including Vice President Mike Pence. “We know he conspired with others to acquire fake electoral votes.”
Then he set up the final attack, the violent attack on the Capitol. “Knowing that members of the mob were armed, he sent them to march on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes,” Cheney said.
“As the mob attacked, as the mob brutally beat police officers, as the mob hunted Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, as they attacked and assaulted – and it was violent; go back and look at the video of what was happening on the west front of the Capitol – as the mob attacked, we now know that Donald Trump sat in the dining room next to the Oval Office and he watched it on television,” she said.
“Think of that. A mob that he had summoned, he had mobilized, attacking the heart of America’s democracy, doing his bidding.”
Members of that mob have testified in their court cases that they were doing was Trump told them to do, Cheney noted.
While the violent assault was taking place, Trump’s family and advisers urged him to call off the mob, she said. “For 187 minutes, he refused to just tell the mob to leave.”
Even after Trump was passed a note that a civilian had been shot in the House chamber, “he continued to watch the violence on television. He continued to refuse to help people.”
“I don’t care if you’re a Republican, if you’re a Democrat, if you’re an independent, that is depravity,” Cheney said. “That is depravity, and we cannot be numb to it, and we cannot allow that man to gain power ever again.”
Cheney’s service on the select committee caused many fellow Republicans to call her a traitor. But she told of a message she received from a Gold Star father whose son died in Afghanistan. “Standing up for truth honors all who gave all,” he wrote.
Looking to Jan. 6, 2025, Cheney is hoping not only that Trump is trounced but that Democrats will control the House.
“You know that their game plan is to claim the election was rigged,” she said. “It matters a lot whether or not the Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives.”
Speaker Mike Johnson did Trump’s bidding in challenging the results of the election, she said, even though he knew what he was doing was unconstitutional. “That is someone you can’t trust again as speaker of the House.”
The events of Jan. 6, 2021, would have been much worse, Cheney said, if Pence had not followed the advice of former Hoosier Vice President Dan Quayle and instead had done what Trump urged him to do in refusing to certify the true results of the election.
Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, became vice president after a razor-thin election on Nov. 7, 2000, that came down to a 537-vote margin in Florida. George W. Bush won over Al Gore for the presidency.
When Cheney’s father was sworn in, “I remember being struck that day by what an amazing and moving experience that was,” she said. “There we were as Americans, coming together to observe and participate in the peaceful transfer of power.”
That transfer is the foundation of what it means to live in a democratic republic. Consider also that the presidency is the most powerful office in the world. “We can only entrust those with the highest character,” she said.
“There’s a transfer of power that nobody sees” as a president is sworn in, Cheney said, involving the briefcase with the codes for a nuclear launch. “At the precise moment that the president takes the oath of office, that briefcase transfers from the former president’s military aide to the new president’s military aide.”
Trump must never again be allowed near those codes, she said.
After the Jan. 6 attack, the House members returned to certify the election. Cheney went to Statuary Hall, where the House met from 1807 to 1857, around midnight, seeing Pence there. Law enforcement officers in black tactical gear were leaning against the statues, “They were exhausted from the brutal hand-to-hand combat in which they engaged for hours,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for them, our democracy would have faced an even bigger constitutional crisis.”
The government didn’t fall. “Institutions held because there were brave men and women who did their duty.”
Cheney went into the Capitol rotunda, where presidents have laid in state. “Almost every wall circling the room, there were troops in riot gear,” she said. One told her, “I fought in Iraq, and I have never seen the bloody face-to-face combat that we have seen today.”
Cheney referred to John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger,” he said. This fall is the current generation’s time to defend democracy, she said. “Will we do our duty? Will we defend the Constitution?”
Long-time Chicago TV political reporter Mary Ann Ahern posed a series of questions from the audience to Cheney, including why a Republican would endorse Democrat Kamala Harris, who wasn’t chosen by the voters in the primary election.
“There’s no question about who the candidate is in this race who will protect our Constitution,” Cheney said.
The coalition coming together to support Harris includes a cross-section of Americans with differing policy views, she said. That gives Harris the added responsibility to prove after the election that the president is responsible for all Americans.
“It breaks my heart what has happened to the Republican Party,” she said.
Cheney didn’t rule out another run for public office but wouldn’t say whether she would run as a Republican again.
“We can’t have only one party that is putting the Constitution first,” she said. “The Republican party of today, I’m not sure if it’s recoverable.”
Amid speculation about whether she could have a post in Harris’ cabinet if Harris wins, Cheney said she isn’t looking that far ahead. She’s focused on defeating Trump and enjoying her remaining time with her youngest son before he starts college.
Stuart McMillan, whose family foundation created the MAAC public safety training facility in Valparaiso, introduced Cheney. McMillan thinks of the nation’s founders as superheroes. “Today we need our own superheroes who stand up for their own ideals,” he said.
Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter, who spoke with Cheney afterward, praised her. “Our Constitution needs to stand,” he said. “I thought it was solid,” but Trump proved otherwise. “He has a mechanism of how he would dismantle it.”
Nancy McCready, of Long Beach, called Cheney’s talk “wonderful, clear, concise.”
“We should be so grateful she stepped in,” McCready said.
Leland Culver, of Gary, also spoke with Cheney. “I appreciated the way she spoke about defending democracy, the way she defended it,” he said. Though Culver disagrees with many of Cheney’s policies, he appreciates what she has done to help the Harris campaign.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
