Liz Cheney on How the Post-Trump GOP Has Become the “Anti ...

Liz Cheney had hoped to author the last chapter of Donald Trump’s political career during her time as vice chair of the January 6 committee. But, as the former president runs to reclaim the White House on an extreme, antidemocratic platform, the former Wyoming representative is now concerned that the 2021 insurrection was just the beginning.

“We may have many darker chapters ahead,” Cheney writes in her new book, Oath and Honor, which hit shelves Tuesday.

In an interview, which has been edited for clarity and length, the former number three House Republican and daughter of the former vice president discussed her work to stop Trump in 2024, why she hopes Democrats take back the House, and her own political future—including a potential third-party White House bid. “The Republican Party right now has become an anti-Constitution party,” Cheney told me. “I think we ought to look for ways we can come together to work to stop that.”

Vanity Fair: It’s been a wild year for the House of Representatives. We’ve seen the majority dedicate itself to Trump once again. We’ve had these pitched battles over the gavel, culminating with the ouster of Kevin McCarthy and the ascent of Mike Johnson—neither of whom come off looking very good in your book. What’s it been like watching all this play out from the outside rather than inside the chamber?

Liz Cheney: Well, it’s been sad watching the continued descent of the House Republicans. And I do think the election of Mike Johnson is clarifying. It’s clear that he’s somebody who’s acted in ways that he knew were inconsistent with the law, with the Constitution, and did so in order to placate Donald Trump. And so I think the country needs better people than we have today in the House of Representatives. So I would say, the main reaction I have watching the whole thing is just sort of a combination of disgust and sadness.

You and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans on the January 6 committee, are no longer in Congress—and Mitt Romney, who’s maybe the most prominent anti-Trump Republican currently serving, is retiring after this term. How much worse does this get when there are so few Republicans, if any right now in office, who are actually committed to the Constitution and willing to put the country ahead of Trump?

Well, it could get much worse. You know, I spend a lot of my time talking, especially to young people on college campuses, but to audiences all over the country, making the point that we have to demand excellence from our elected officials. We’re certainly not demanding much today. That means that we need more people running for office, because, you know, too often there’s not an excellent choice on the ballot. And so we need more people to get engaged, to run themselves, and people need to take individual responsibility for the choices that we make at the ballot box. And make sure that people are casting their votes for serious candidates who are going to uphold the Constitution.

It’s been about a year since the January 6 committee released its final report. What do you hope the legacy of the committee will be?

I’m very proud of the work we did. I think it was really important. I think that the report itself lays out just a mountain of evidence and facts and testimony from those people who know Donald Trump best, mostly Republicans, at the highest levels—the Justice Department, people he appointed in the White House, family members, you know—about just the depth and the breadth of his plan to overturn the election and seize power. And so I think having that record there, it’s just crucially important. And so I hope that it’s something that people continue to turn to and reference if there’s ever any questions about what kind of president Donald Trump would be if given the chance again.

Our political memory can sometimes be short. Are you confident that Americans are bearing in mind that warning, three years after he left office? Do you think there’s a risk that some of the immediacy and just the memory of how bad it got can kind of ameliorate a little bit?

I do think that it’s important for people not to lose sight of what happened, and I think there’s a concerted effort underway by Republicans in Congress to whitewash what happened. And I think we have to fight against that. But I think, at the end of the day, you sort of have to recognize that there’s a majority of people, Republicans and Democrats and independents, that understand how dangerous he is. And there is certainly a percentage of the Republican Party that will never be convinced. But they aren’t the majority. And so, I think, the important thing is for people to be willing, in my view, to put partisanship aside, to put together a coalition of people that believe in the Constitution, and really go vote that way in 2024.

How have you felt about the response from President Biden and the Democrats to this threat from Trump and his allies?

Democrats stand and recognize that threat. I think that it’s not only Democrats. I think if you go back, the vast majority of witnesses [to testify before] the select committee were Republicans. But I also think that the judiciary has played an exemplary role here in terms of judges and justices, whether appointed by [Barack] Obama or [George W.] Bush or Trump, that we’ve seen across the board, almost without exception, a real recognition and understanding of the threat that exists. The [former] president here was willing to go to war with the courts, said he’s not going to abide by the ruling of the courts. And I think you’ve seen from the judicial system adherence to the Constitution, to the fundamental underpinnings of the republic.

In other recent interviews you’ve done, you’ve suggested that, because of their alliances with Trump, you would prefer a Democratic majority to a Republican majority. Would that be an accurate characterization?

It is a difficult choice to have arrived at, as you can imagine. And I haven’t changed my views on policy. I’m a conservative, and there are many, many things I disagree with Democrats on. But if the question is, Who do you want in the majority in a situation in which we might have a presidential election thrown into the House of Representatives?—and that could happen; it could well be nobody gets to 270—you have to think about who you want in charge on January 6 of 2025. And it is really important that Mike Johnson not be sitting in the Speaker’s chair, if we end up in that set of circumstances. We’ve come to a place where you can’t count on this group of elected Republicans to defend the Constitution. That’s very sad. But that’s where we are.

Extending that logic, then, if Donald Trump is the nominee in 2024 for the Republicans, does that mean voting for Joe Biden?

If Donald Trump’s the nominee for the Republicans, then Democrats and Republicans and independents have to come together to defeat him. I don’t know who the Democratic nominee is going to be yet. We don’t know for sure. I don’t know who else is going to be in the race. So I’m not endorsing any single candidate right now. But I would not be voting for Donald Trump and will be working to put together a coalition that has the best chance of beating him.

There’s been speculation about your own intentions about a possible run, and I’ve seen you say that you’re leaving the door open. Why do you think there’s been that speculation? Do you think that there’s a hunger for another voice in the race, besides the two that currently seem like they’re going to be the nominees?

I think there’s a real fear, certainly that I see anecdotally around the country, that Donald Trump might—well, you look at the polls. It’s entirely possible that he could be the nominee, and you can’t rule out the possibility that he could win, and I think that fear drives people to recognize, Well, we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. So how are we going to make sure it doesn’t happen? And I think that’s why you see more people this time around thinking about whether or not a third party makes sense. Or whether or not an independent candidacy makes sense. People are searching for something that will help ensure that we avoid the very worst outcome.

I’m wondering if all of this has led you to reflect on the Republican Party as a whole, before Trump. I think sometimes he’s sort of presented as a divergence from the norm. Do you think that he’s a symptom of something deeper that was wrong in the party that allowed his ascent in the first place?

You know, I think that what Trump has done is effectively convinced a lot of people that he speaks for them, that he represents them. I think he tapped into a real sense many people have around the country that the government doesn’t listen to them, that they’re voiceless. And so I think that reflecting on what that means—a number of people are not Republican that are part of that coalition—involves what I suppose we used to call Reagan Democrats. That involves independents, as well as people who have never been involved in politics before. The success that he has had in convincing people to believe his lies is something that goes beyond partisanship. The political science analysis of the factors that contributed to his rise is something that is important to look at for the future. But I watch and I hear Democrats sort of condemning the Republican Party back to the kind of establishment, under Abraham Lincoln, and I think that’s wrong and partisan. Both parties have had significant failures, and both parties have had successes.

In response to the stand that you took when you were in office and your work on the January 6 committee, you faced a lot of criticism from members of your party; of course, you were primaried. Now that you have the book, and you’ve been speaking to the media, that’s kicked up some of these criticisms again. I saw Lindsey Graham dismissing your warnings as just a “hatred” of Trump. How do you think your message is breaking through to the people it needs to break through to?

Lindsey Graham has demonstrated a sort of capacity for flattery of Donald Trump that really exceeds any I’ve ever seen. I think it’s sad. I think Lindsey Graham is somebody who has been in the right place on national security issues—certainly when Senator McCain was alive. Since Senator McCain’s passing, Lindsey Graham has decided to sort of hitch his wagon to Donald Trump, and that is a sad thing to see. But, you know, Lindsey Graham is not my audience.