Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and a staunch neoconservative, repeatedly found herself at odds with her party colleagues over Trump and his administration’s policies.
A majority of House Republicans voted to oust Cheney from her position – which she had held since January 2019 – on Wednesday after a previous attempt in February failed.
“If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person,” she said during the closed-door vote, NBC reported. “You have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy.”
Cheney angered many Republicans after supporting the second impeachment effort against Trump following the January 6 storming of the Capitol by a group of his supporters. She further outraged Trump-loyal colleagues after rejecting his claims that the presidential election had been rigged against him, prompting the vote to oust her from leadership.
In a speech on the House floor on Tuesday, Cheney called on her colleagues to “speak the truth,” adding, “Our election was not stolen and America has not failed.”
“I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy,” she declared.
Cheney lost the vote on Wednesday because she has not been “whipping her colleagues to stay in her position” like she did before the February vote, CNN reported. Instead, she has apparently “been looking beyond her expulsion from House GOP leadership” by “enlisting the help from alumni of the Bush administration.”
Trump immediately celebrated the ousting of Cheney in his own caustic statement, calling the congresswoman a “bitter, horrible human being,” a “poor leader,” a “warmonger,” and “a person with absolutely no personality or heart.”
“I watched her yesterday and realized how bad she is for the Republican Party,” wrote Trump. “She is a talking point for Democrats, whether that means the border, the gas lines, inflation, or destroying our economy.”
“I look forward to soon watching her as a paid contributor on CNN or MSDNC!” he concluded.
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