Monday, May 10, 2021
Prominent Trump critic
The air for Cheney is getting thinner
Republican Cheney is one of the most prominent critics of ex-President Trump in her party. He wants to punish her and have her removed from her high-ranking post. Now he seems to be one step further.
In the power struggle among the Republicans in the US House of Representatives, the pressure on the critic of ex-President Donald Trump, Liz Cheney, is increasing. The party’s parliamentary group leader in the Congress Chamber, Kevin McCarthy, told Fox News on Sunday that he supported Cheney’s internal party candidate for chairing the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives, Elise Stefanik. The influential McCarthy is seen by some observers in the US as something like a “weather vane” that shows where the party is headed. In this respect, the air for Cheney is likely to be thinner.
In a guest post for the Washington Post on Wednesday, Cheney urged her party colleagues to break with Trump and called on them to “turn away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump personality cult”. As Chair of the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives, Cheney is the third highest MP in her group. Trump calls for her to be removed from this leadership position.
Cheney is one of ten Republicans who voted with the Democrats for impeachment against Trump after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in early January. The majority in the Senate necessary to convict Trump did not come about at the time.
“Party is at the turning point”
Since the defeat of Trump by his Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the November election, a dispute has raged in the Republican Party. On Wednesday there could be a Republican vote in the House of Representatives to determine the future of Cheney in her post.
In the Washington Post, Cheney had again criticized Trump’s persistent claims that he had been fraudulently deprived of his victory in last November’s election. “His message: I am still the rightful President, and President (Joe) Biden is illegitimate. Trump is now repeating those words with full knowledge that this type of language provoked violence on January 6th.”
At that time, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, where MPs and senators wanted to make Biden’s victory official. Cheney accused Trump of wanting to “undermine confidence in election results and the rule of law”. “No other American president has ever done this.” Cheney continued, “The Republican Party is at a turning point.”
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