Former Rep Liz Cheney of Wyoming took aim at the state of American politics, telling a crowd at the 92nd Street Y in New York that the country is “electing idiots.”
“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Ms Cheney said during an appearance at the community center, in quotes reported by The Hill. “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
Ms Cheney did not name specific elected officials, but one former elected official has been the target of her ire for years: former President Donald Trump. Ms Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is a staunch critic of the former president and lost her seat in Congress after serving on the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
Ms Cheney won the admiration of a number of liberals and pro-democracy conservatives for her criticism of Mr Trump and service on the committee, but is now reviled by a major portion of the Republican Party as a result.
Ms Cheney, despite her longstanding conservatism and status as a member of the Republican Party elite, was trounced in her primary against pro-Trump challenger Harriet Hageman last August. Ms Cheney received just under 29 per cent of the vote.
After her defeat, Ms Cheney fueled speculation that she might run for president either as an independent or anti-Trump Republican. To this point, however, she has not declared her candidacy. When asked at the 92nd Street Y about the possibility, Ms Cheney was noncommittal.
“Because of the situation that we’re in, where we have a major-party candidate who’s trying to unravel our democracy — and I don’t say that lightly — we have to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are necessary to defeat him, and those are the alliances we’ve got to build across party lines,” she said.
Ms Cheney said she the country must get back to electing “serious people,” though she continued to call out one candidate by name only.
“I really believe — and I’ve never believed something as strongly as I know this — that the single most important thing for the country is that Donald Trump can’t be anywhere near the Oval Office again,” Ms Cheney said.
It may be a tough fight: Mr Trump is currently leading polls of the ongoing Republican primary by a wide margin, with a number of potential challengers struggling to unite a wide swath of GOP voters against him.
