WASHINGTON — Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., on Wednesday called former President Donald Trump a threat to the nation and said members of her party can't be loyal to both him and the Constitution.
Cheney made the remarks in a speech in Simi Valley, Calif., at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum as part of a speaker series focusing on "leading voices in the conservative movement to address critical questions facing the future of the Republican Party."
"We’re confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before," she said. "And that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic, and he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man."
The Republican congresswoman, who serves as ranking member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said it has become clear that Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election "were even more chilling and threatening than we imagined."
"In the reality that we face today as Republicans, as we think about the choice in front of us, we have to choose, because Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution," she said.
Cheney praised former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for testifying publicly Tuesday before the Jan. 6 committee, saying that the young woman's superiors, "men many years older, are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity and intimidation."
She said little girls across the country are seeing in Hutchinson "what it really means to be a patriot," and added, "These days for the most part, men are running the world and it is really not going that well," a line that received rousing applause.
