New York Representative Elise Stefanik claimed on Sunday that the Republican Party is unified following Liz Cheney's ouster in a Republican leadership role and called former President Donald Trump 'an important voice in the Republican Party.'
Stefanik recently replaced Cheney as the House Conference Chair, after Cheney was ousted from her position last week for blasting the former president's claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
Cheney previously said she would do 'whatever it takes' to keep Trump from being president again and from solidifying his control of the Republican Party. And she would not rule out her own presidential bid in 2024 to keep Trump from winning another term.
'I'm going to do everything that I can both to make sure that that never happens, but also to make sure that the Republican Party gets back to substance and policy,' she said. 'We cannot be dragged backward by the very dangerous lies of a former president.'
But Stefanik said in another interview on Sunday that the party is 'unified in exposing the radical far-left agenda of President Joe Biden and Speaker Pelosi.'
'Republicans are looking forward,' she said. 'We are unified and we are talking about conservative principles.'
Stefanik said the party wants to focus 'every day on exposing the border crisis, economic crisis and the national security crisis in the Middle East because it's having an impact on everyday Americans.'
New York Representative Elise Stefanik claimed on Sunday that the Republican Party is unified following Liz Cheney's ouster in a Republican leadership role and called former President Donald Trump 'an important voice in the Republican Party
Cheney said she regrets voting for Donald Trump in 2020 and called his lies about election fraud a 'danger' to the nation
'We are working as one team,' she said. 'We are focused on moving forward.'
She added that the Republican Party is now 'looking forward' while Cheney is 'looking backwards.'
Cheney, meanwhile, remained defiant after being removed from her Number Three leadership position among House Republicans.
'I'm not leaving the party,' she said.
She expressed zero regret for her public challenges to Trump's false claim he won the 2020 election and for her calls that he be held accountable for his role in inciting the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill that left five people dead.
'It's an ongoing threat,' she said. 'So silence is not an option.
On Sunday, Cheney said that the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump for president were 'misled' and 'betrayed.'
Stefanik recently replaced Cheney as the House Conference Chair, after Cheney was ousted from her position last week for blasting the former president's claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged
Stefanik said in another interview on Sunday that the party is 'unified in exposing the radical far-left agenda of President Joe Biden and Speaker Pelosi'
Rep. Liz Cheney said House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy should testify before the commission studying the January 6th riot and predicted he will likely be subpoenaed
She also accused House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the woman who replaced her as GOP Conference Chair, of being complicit in Trump's lie that he won the 2020 election.
The Wyoming Republican, who voted for Trump in last year's contest, said she regrets that decision and argued the former president is a 'real danger' to democracy with his false claims of election fraud.
'Former President Trump continues to be a real danger. What he's doing and what he's saying, his claims, his refusal to accept decisions by the courts, his claims continued as recently as yesterday that somehow this election was stolen,' she said on Fox News Sunday.
She told Chris Wallace the Republicans who supported him were misled.
'Those millions of people that you mentioned who supported the president have been misled. They've been betrayed. And certainly as we see his continued action to attack our democracy, his continued refusal to accept the results of the last election, you see that ongoing danger,' Cheney said.
She also had harsh words for McCarthy and Stefanik. McCarthy supported Stefanik's bid for leadership after it was clear House Republicans wanted Cheney booted out.
Cheney said the two were complicit in Trump's lies.
'They are,' she said. 'I'm not willing to do that.'
'What I said in my last remarks to the conference as chairwoman of the conference was that if they were looking for leaders who would be complicit in spreading the big lie, I wasn't their person, that there were plenty of other people who would do that,' she said.
Trump, on Saturday, continued his tirade about his loss last year: 'As our Country is being destroyed, both inside and out, the Presidential Election of 2020 will go down as THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!,' he said in a statement.
Many Republicans have embraced Trump, seeing his supporters as their way of taking back control of the House and the Senate in the 2022 midterm election.
But Cheney rejected that argument.
'We cannot do that if we are embracing the big lie, if we are embracing what former President Trump continues to say on a nearly daily basis, which is claims that the election was stolen, using the same language he used, that he knows provoke violence on January 6th,' she said.
Cheney also accused Trump of echoing Chinese communists when it comes to democracy and predicted the commission examining the January 6 MAGA riot will have to subpoena McCarthy to learn what the former president told him that day.
Cheney, who was ousted from House Republican Leadership last week for her criticism of Trump, has not let up since she was booted out.
The Republican from Wyoming has been on a media tour since her exile, where she's called for her party to hold Trump accountable for his false claims he won the presidential election and his role in the riot, which left five people dead. She has said repeatedly the former president cannot be elected to another term in 2024 and won't rule out her own bid to stop him.
She took her tough talk a step further in an interview with ABC's This Week, saying Trump's lies about the 2020 election are 'dangerous' and are similar to what Chinese communists say about democracy.
Cheney said the riot, where Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, was the last straw for her
'We have to recognize what it means for the nation to have a former president who has not conceded and who continues to suggest that our electoral system cannot function, cannot do the will of the people,' she said in the interview that aired Sunday.
'To cause that kind of questioning about our process, frankly, it's the same kinds of things that the Chinese Communist Party says about democracy: that it's a failed system, that America is a failed nation,' she added.
'I won't be part of that. And I think it's very important for Republicans who won't be part of that to stand up and speak out.'
Cheney's words will likely irritate the former president, who had a contentious relationship with China while in the Oval Office and engaged in a trade war with Beijing.
She said she believes only a small number of Republicans believe Trump's lie the election was stolen.
'I think it's a relatively small number,' she said on ABC's This Week.
Cheney also had tough words for House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has embraced Trump as he tries to win back control of the House in the 2022 midterms and take over as speaker. McCarthy supported Stefanik replacing Cheney as GOP Conference Chair.
Rep. Liz Cheney accused Donald Trump of echoing Chinese communists when it comes to democracy, keeping up her criticism of former president
She said McCarthy, who spoke on the phone with Trump during the January 6th riot as MAGA supporters stormed the Capitol, will likely be subpoenaed by the commission studying what happened.
She said he should testify.
'He absolutely should, and I wouldn't be surprised if he were subpoenaed. I think that he very clearly and said publicly that he's got information about the president's state of mind that day,' Cheney said.
'I would hope he doesn't require a subpoena, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were subpoenaed,' she added.
She said, for her, January 6th was the last straw.
'You know, once January 6th happened, that that's the end. And that has been, I think, the most disappointing thing to me, that that more of my colleagues have not been willing to stand up and say that can never happen again,' she said.
The bipartisan commission will be evenly split between Republican and Democratic lawmakers. It will study the facts and circumstances of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as well as the influencing factors that may have provoked the riot.
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