And joining me now is former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney,
author of Oath and Honor, a memoir and a warning.
Congresswoman Cheney, welcome back to Meet the Press.
Thank you for being here.
Well, thank you for having me.
Always, always great to be here.
Well, it's great to see you.
Let's start right where I left off with House Speaker
Mike Johnson.
And, and I'll put it this way.
President Biden has said that he doesn't know if there
will be a peaceful transfer of power in 2025.
You just heard how the House Speaker answered my questions
about whether he would certify the election results.
Do you have faith that this election will be free
and fair and that there will be a peaceful transfer
of power?
I do not have faith that Mike Johnson will fulfill
his constitutional obligations.
And if you just look at what he did in
2020, he knew and he knew with specificity that the
claims of fraud that Donald Trump was making and that
he was repeating, he knew those to be false.
He we had very clear and, and specific conversations about
that.
He knew that courts had specifically found that those claims
were false.
He knew they weren't true.
He also knew that what he was urging Congress do
in terms of throwing out the votes of millions of
Americans, he knew with specificity that that was unconstitutional.
He was told that not only in discussions with me,
but also by the House Republican Counsel, he signed his
name to a brief filed with the United States Supreme
Court that made those claims he knew to be false.
So he is, he has a record repeatedly of doing
things that he knows to be wrong, that he knows
to be unconstitutional in order to placate Donald Trump.
And, and frankly, you know, you saw that sycophancy just
now on display.
So I think that it is, it's very concerning.
I do think that Donald Trump has consistently said again
and again and again, you know, in the last few
months that this election, you know, is going to be
rigged and that if he loses, that's why.
So I think it's very important that that the Republicans
not be in the majority in the House come January
2025.
And when it comes to the possibility of a peaceful
transfer of power, are are you optimistic that there will
be?
Yeah.
Look, I think that Donald Trump is not currently in
the White House.
So he does not have the ability to exercise the
control he did in 2020 and 2021.
I hear repeatedly from people like Mike Johnson, like JD
Vance, this claim that somehow we had a peaceful transfer
of power.
Donald Trump sat and watched for over three hours while
our capital was brutally attacked by a mob that he
sent there, while police officers were brutally beaten and Donald
Trump refused to tell them to go home for over
three hours.
So anybody who is interested in the truth ought to
go look at those videos.
We did not have a peaceful transfer of power in
2021.
Just this week, Senator JD Vance was asked five different
times if Donald Trump lost the election.
He refused to say yes.
Polls show that millions of Republicans share that same view.
How do you really reach those voters, those Republicans?
Yeah.
I mean, I look, I think, Kristen, when people write
the history of this.
The Republican elected officials who know it's false, who continue
to spread the lie will be among those who are
shown to just be really complicit in this attempt to
to unravel the Republic.
And so they are spreading this lie.
They know it isn't true.
If we are going to be a nation of laws,
we abide by the rulings of the courts.
And Donald Trump had the opportunity.
61 out of 62 courts ruled against him.
And he was told repeatedly throughout this.
That what he was saying was false.
So the fact that now you've got the Republican Party,
the leader, leaders of the party who are are in
the grips of, you know, it seems to me just
to be cowardice that they are afraid of Donald Trump.
But that they are willing to perpetuate his lies at
the expense of their duty of the Constitution tells you
something about about the real damage that's been done to
the Republican Party.
You told my colleague Savannah Guthrie last year, quote, a
vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that
you ever get to vote in.
That is an incredibly dire warning, Congresswoman.
What exactly did you mean by that?
You know, I think people really need to look very
carefully at what Donald Trump will do if he were
ever to be in the Oval Office again.
The extent to which that, you know, and he has
said repeatedly that, you know, he believes he will be
immune, certainly the Supreme Court ruling whatever they thought they
were doing, Donald Trump believes he will be immune for
anything he does once he's in office.
He will not respect the rulings of our courts.
And people have to realize our courts can't enforce their
own rulings.
So if a president refuses to carry out his obligation
to do so, then we are no longer a nation
of laws.
Donald Trump will ignore Congress.
He will appoint people, people like Mike Flynn, for example,
who just, you know, 30, six hours ago, Mike Flynn
was at an event where he was asked whether or
not the president's opponents should be executed.
And he he basically said, listen, yes, I'm going to
unleash the gates of hell.
These are the kinds of people that Donald Trump will
be putting in place.
The people that stopped him from his worst desires last
time around won't serve again.
Well, like Mark Miley comes to mind, who, according to
Bob Woodward's new book, War, called him a fascist.
Would you go that far just to call him a
look, I, I have tremendous respect for for General Miley
and I, I see no reason to disagree with that
assessment.
I want to ask you about something Donald Trump said,
the Donald Trump that the world got to know back
in 2016.
He was asked back then during a debate with Secretary
Clinton whether he would accept the election results.
Here's what he said.
One of the prize of this country is the peaceful
transition of power and that no matter how hard fought
a campaign is that at the end of the campaign
that the loser concedes to the winner.
Are you saying you're not prepared now to what I'm
saying is that I will tell you at the time,
I'll keep you in suspense.
Well, Chris, let me respond to that because that's horrifying.
Congresswoman, do you regret standing by him at the time
and for all of those years after?
Yes, I do.
And I think that, you know, we've now actually seen
him carry that out.
And so for for, you know, certainly people after what
he did on January 6th to act as though you
can have confidence in him, you know, that that that
simply is just not credible.
The other thing I think people have to realize is,
is what he did on January 6th, you know, watching
that brutal attack, that's that's depravity and it's just also
fundamentally cruel.
It's the same kind of thing that drives him to
lie to people about whether where they can get hurricane
relief.
I mean, think about about the fact our fellow citizens
are in dire straits, they're in dire needs, people's lives
are at risk, and he's lying to them for his
own political gain about where they can get relief.
That kind of cruelty makes somebody unfit for this office.
And the Supreme Court has now ruled that he has
immunity for official acts that were taken while in office.
I'm curious, Congresswoman, do you still have faith and confidence
in the Supreme Court?
Look, I think that the court took far too long
to issue that ruling.
I think that they should have taken this up when
Jack Smith asked them to initially.
And I think they got it wrong.
And I think that Justice Sotomayor and her dissent in
the description that she gives of the danger that Donald
Trump poses, she got it right.
Now, you know, I'm a conservative.
I'm somebody who has supported those Supreme Court justices in
the past.
Many of them are friends of mine.
You know, actually, Justice Kagan was one of my professors
in law school, my favorite professor in law school.
But I know the conservative justices, too.
But I am deeply concerned about things like the role
that Jenny Thomas played and Jenny Thomas's continued refusal to
say that she accepts the rulings of the courts.
So, and I'm also concerned about, you know, the flag
flying upside down at Justice Alito's home.
I think that's indefensible.
Have you lost faith in them, though, Congresswoman?
I am.
I I think it's very important that the court stand
apart from politics.
I do have some real concerns about recent activities and
rulings, but but I think we need our courts, both
our Supreme Court as well as the lower courts to
play the kind of role that we've seen, frankly, the
vast majority of judges play since January 6th.
Back in 2020, you said Kamala Harris, when she was
announced as President Biden's running mate, you called her a
radical liberal whose policies, quote, are completely inconsistent with what
most Americans believe in and stand for.
I know that you don't view this as a policy
election.
You've been very clear about that.
But are there policies that Kamala Harris supports that you
also back?
Absolutely.
And I would say the extent to which, you know,
she and I certainly have had our disagreements.
But when you look at the whole range of issues,
for example, with respect to support for Ukraine, with respect
to the fact that, you know, she is saying that
the United States has to lead in the world, Donald
Trump is embracing tyrants.
Donald Trump loves tyrants.
He idolizes them.
JD Vance and Donald Trump both support a very isolationist
foreign policy and an erratic and a chaotic foreign policy
that will leave us much less safe.
Do you regret any of the language that you used
to describe Harris and Biden at the time?
They would dismantle our freedom, destroy our history.
The type of language you're using now about Donald.
Look, I think certainly those were, were harsh things that
I said.
I, I think that they reflect absolutely that we had
a policy disagreement on a series of issues.
But I also think that's why it's so important for
people to, to focus on the fact that I am
supporting her now and that there's such a broad coalition
that's coming together to support her.
And, and it's, it's based in part on who she
is, on the fact that she will lead with a
sincere heart, on the fact that she is somebody who's
dedicated her life to public service.
And, and looking at what Donald Trump poses, the kind
of of chaotic, absolute depravity that that he would bring
if he were ever to be elected again.
Congresswoman, do you still consider yourself to be a Republican?
And can you take us inside the conversation you had
with your father when he decided to vote for Kamala
Harris?
I'm a conservative.
Are you a Republican?
I I'm a conservative.
I am, I am not a member of this do
not consider myself a member of Donald Trump's Republican Party.
And, you know, my father and I speak everyday and
he has really, you know, from the very beginning of
this process understood as much as I do even more
in the beginning, probably the threat that that Donald Trump
poses.
And so, you know, this was not any kind of
a surprise.
And, and look, I think the fact that it's not,
it's not just him, but the numbers of, you know,
senior officials, national security advisers, secretaries of defense that you
have seen who served in the Trump administration who say
this man is unfit.
And Republicans can try all they want to get people
to ignore that, to look away from that.
But I think that's a very important thing for the
voters to recognize.
Congresswoman Liz Cheney, I know we'll be seeing a lot
of you out on the campaign trail.
Thank you so much for being here this morning on
a very busy.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.