Join us tonight, former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney.
She's the author of a new book,
Oath and Honor, A Memoir and a Warning.
Thanks for coming in. Thank you for having me.
Before we talk about the book and all the specifics
in here,
I do want to ask and tap your foreign policy
expertise
in your old job and how you think the Biden
administration is doing with Israel,
Hamas and where they stand now.
I worry very much that the Biden administration is beginning
to abandon Israel.
And I think we're in a situation where Hamas must
be destroyed.
If if, you know, Israel wants to make sure they
don't face another October 7th,
Hamas has to be destroyed.
And do you see a creeping off of that?
Yeah. I mean, I think that in the initial days
after the attack,
President Biden was saying the right things and expressing strong
solidarity with Israel.
But now I think we're seeing a sense of for
pushing Israel to do perhaps less than the complete destruction
of Hamas.
And and I think it's very important that that that
that backing off not happen.
All right. I want to read a section quote from
your book,
Oath and Honor. Today. None of us can tell if
the story of January 6th is nearing its end or
is only just beginning.
We may have darker chapters ahead.
Trump has told us that he thinks the Constitution can
and should be suspended when necessary,
that what happened on January 6th was justified,
that in a second Trump presidency he would seek retribution
and much more.
He knows judicial rulings have force only if the executive
branch
enforces them. So he won't.
You're fearful of a second Trump presidency.
I am. I think that
you know, we know what he will do.
He's already done it. We saw what he did after
the 2020 election,
obviously what he did to try to seize power in
2020
and of course on January 6th.
And and he tells us every day.
And if you look at the steps that he would
have to take in terms of simply refusing to enforce
court orders or comply with court orders with which he
disagrees, putting people in key positions
as attorney general for example or as head of OLC,
unethical lawyers who would help him
frankly blow through many of the guardrails of our Constitution.
I think it's a it's a very real concern
that he would take steps very quickly that would unravel
the rule of law.
This is the Wall Street Journal.
This is not a MAGA.
You know,
op-ed here and they say Trump as dictators.
Classic case of projection. Abuse,
executive power, abuse executive power,
ignore the law, run roughshod over individual liberties,
retaliate against political opponents. Mr.
Biden and his allies have done exactly what they warned
Mr.
Trump will do if he returns to the White House.
Unlike Mr. Biden, however, Mr.
Trump would have to contend with a hostile media and
a federal bureaucracy that would be throwing pots,
pans and candlesticks at him at every step.
Well, I think they're wrong.
I think if you again,
if you look at we don't have to guess about
what what the next President Trump would do because he
did it before.
And he would not have around him the people that
were around him.
The people frankly that the country will hear from as
his trial moves forward.
Who were all his appointees,
people that he appointed, the White House counsel's office,
the Department of Justice, his own family,
people that told him on January 6th,
as you and I were talking that day actually,
that he needed to tell the mob to go home.
People who told him that what he was doing was
illegal,
those people won't be around him.
And you know, the rulings of our courts are fundamental
to who we are as a constitutional Republic.
If a president doesn't enforce those rulings,
they don't have weight, right?
But what about the point it made in this op-ed
specifically
and and I understand what you're saying about the former
president what you feel about what would happen.
But you haven't been vocal but you haven't been vocal
about President Biden when like executive orders to cancel student
loan ban evictions very different mandate COVID vaccines.
Well here's a list it's a very different after the
SCOTUS we're going to let me answer the yeah I
am just let me list them after the SCOTUS ruled
against it. He still use regulatory means to write off,
you know, the student debt wall off
1.5 million acres of land for fossil fuel.
What what this basically is saying is that there are
things that have been done outside of the rule of
federal courts that you haven't weighed in on.
Well, first of all, I don't think it's true that
I haven't waited on those.
And I think a lot of those,
if you look at the kinds of things that he's
done with respect,
for example, to energy policy,
with respect to setting aside lands across the West,
I've been very vocal that I think those policies are
wrong,
very different from a president.
And look, you wrote a book about George Washington.
The last chapter of your book is called The Gift
of a Peaceful Transition of Power.
That's that is what we're talking about.
But this is not about me.
That's right. But that's a very important concept.
Let me finish my answer because every single president,
Republican and Democrat, since George Washington,
has ensured the peaceful transition of power.
Donald Trump tried to seize power so we can disagree
with Biden policies,
But the fact that he tried to seize power,
the fact that he ignored the rulings of 61 courts,
the fact that he ignored his own
attorney general, his own White House counsel,
who told him what he was saying about the election
was false.
It wasn't true. His claims were false and he went
out and made them anyway,
knowing that the extent to which he,
while a violent mob, was assaulting the capital,
he wouldn't tell them to leave.
Instead, he tweeted against his own vice president and he
poured fuel on the flames.
Those are lines that can't be crossed.
And and look, this isn't about policy.
I voted with Donald Trump
93% of the time. This is about the nation.
It's about the Republic, it's about the Constitution.
And we've covered all elements of of January 6th.
And I had an interview with the former president where
I told him that he did not win the election.
That said, he's winning this election
overwhelmingly. If you look at the polls he is up
63% to his nearest rival,
12% in Iowa, the Des Moines Register
51%. You keep on going down state by state.
What is not getting across if your message is so
urgent on these other channels and other places,
what is not happening to the electorate that to see
that,
Well, I think you're you're actually seeing some movement.
There been other polls out today that show some movement
among some of the other candidates.
And look what I would say to Fox viewers and
I worked here for many years,
as you know and the
the race today presents a number of
candidates, Republican candidates who will abide by the Constitution.
And you can have the policies that we all want,
the policies some of which Donald Trump put into place,
some of which he didn't.
We can have conservative policies without having to torch the
Constitution.
And So what? I would urge
people watching today who are going to be voting in
those caucuses or in those primaries,
vote for somebody else. Do not vote for the person
who already tried to seize power.
You lost your primary to Harriet Hackman,
2 to one. And she said
Liz Cheney has never been in touch with your average
person
in 2019, AP said. Wyoming's Congressman says a summary of
the investigation to whether President Donald Trump election campaign coordinated
with Russia confirms what Republicans already knew.
The summary of Robert Mueller's investigation says there was no
collusion between Trump's 2016 campaign in Russia.
Wyoming US Representative Liz Cheney says Democrats for over 2
years have peddled falsehoods and made one scurrilous game claim
after another involving Trump in Russia,
Cheney says in the statement.
It's time for Democrats to put aside their partisan agenda
of attacking Trump and focus on real issues.
What do you say to critics who say,
listen, all of this as
even after you look at January 6th,
all of this is about going after Donald Trump and
that his policies,
if you look back to
his four years or something that they want.
So there are voters who obviously feel that way.
Yeah. So I would say a couple things.
First of all, I won my primary by 70%
of the vote. I could have done that again,
if I was willing to lie about what Donald Trump
did.
I wasn't willing to do that.
I voted against that impeachment,
that you're talking about the first impeachment.
I voted against it, but this was different.
When you have a president of the United States who
attempts to seize power,
that that goes to the heart of of who we
are.
And that danger is when we can't ignore.
And so again, I would say,
look, this is about ensuring that you're going to vote
for somebody,
that you're going to support somebody who's going to uphold
the rule of law.
And one time Donald Trump has demonstrated he won't do
that.
One time you thought about running.
Obviously you're not running, but could you get in this
race?
You know, I haven't made a decision yet,
but but it really it's not about me,
Brett. And I again, I say this again.
You know, I come here to Fox and I sit
in the Charles Krauthammer green room and I know
how much, how revered Charles was by you,
by me. And Charles taught us a whole bunch of
things.
But one of them is that some things have to
matter.
And and rising above politics,
rising above partisanship, recognizing our duty to the Constitution
is the most conservative of all conservative principles.
And so again, this isn't about policy.
You know we started off on on Biden administration foreign
policy with which I have big disagreements,
his economic policy, big disagreements.
It's not about that. It's about whether we're going to
support people that are going to uphold the Constitution.
Well, we have a policy here to hear from all
sides and we wanted to invite you to talk about
your book.
Thank you for coming on and we'll continue to cover
your next steps.
Appreciate it. Thank you. Up next the panel.