Liz Cheney Secretly Orchestrated Op-Ed Trashing Trump By Former Defense Secretaries
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) was behind the secret campaign to get former defense secretaries to trash then President Donald Trump in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
This new leak will seal her fate with the GOP. She was barely hanging on to her leadership post before this bombshell leak. When Congress goes back to work soon a snap vote is all but guaranteed. She will lose the vote and she knows it as some reports claim she is not even fighting her removal behind the scenes as she did a few months ago.
She has also lost key allies like the GOP leader. Kevin McCarthy was caught on a hot mic trashing Cheney saying: “I think she’s got real problems. I’ve had it with, I’ve had it with her. You know, I’ve lost confidence, Well, someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place.”
“There is no way that Liz will be conference chair by month’s end,” a top McCarthy ally said. “When there is a vote, it won’t be a long conference; it will be fast. Everyone knows the outcome.”
“She is a big distraction,” the ally said. “I don’t see McCarthy saving her this time.”
“This is a broad range of lawmakers who have had it with her,” a different GOP insider said.
“She’s a liability, and McCarthy’s as fed up as the rest of us that she is focused on the past rather than winning back the House.”
From The New Yorker:
Cheney’s rupture with the House Republican Conference has become all but final in recent days, but it has been months in the making.
Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in the Washington Post by all ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump’s efforts to politicize the military.
The congresswoman not only recruited her father but personally asked others, including Trump’s first Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, to participate. “She was the one who generated it, because she was so worried about what Trump might do,” Edelman said.
“It speaks to the degree that she was concerned about the threat to our democracy that Trump represented.”
The Post op-ed appeared on January 3rd, just three days before the insurrection at the Capitol.
Little noticed at the time was another Cheney effort to combat Trump’s post-election lies, a twenty-one-page memo written by Cheney and her husband, Phil Perry, an attorney, and circulated on January 3rd to the entire House Republican Conference.
In it, Cheney debunked Trump’s false claims about election fraud and warned her colleagues that voting to overturn the election results, as Trump was insisting, would “set an exceptionally dangerous precedent.”
Very interesting. Back on January 4th former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told me it all "began with a staff person to former Vice President Cheney."
— Aaron Groff (@AaronGroffTV) May 7, 2021
New reporting from @sbg1 says it was @RepLizCheney who "secretly orchestrated" the letterhttps://t.co/sab33MRYJE https://t.co/Q7jp1kQ6MU
I think this bit in @sbg1’s latest story hasn’t been reported before.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 7, 2021
Liz Cheney orchestrated the Washington Post op-Ed by all ten former living Defense Secretaries. That op-Ed warned against involving the US military in any election disputes. https://t.co/KIA5tvScTO pic.twitter.com/H8YwbbdGkL