Liz Cheney , in a sometimes contentious interview with Fox News ‘ Bret Baier , at one point addressed the network’s viewers with a message: Don’t vote for Donald Trump . “We can have conservative policies without having to torch the Constitution,” Cheney said. “And so what I would urge people watching today who are going to be voting in those caucuses and in those primaries, vote for somebody else.
Do not vote for somebody who already tried to seize power. ” Now an outcast from the Republican party for her criticism of Trump and her warnings about giving him a second term, Cheney has made numerous appearances across other media outlets as she promotes her book, Oath and Honor . Her first big sitdown was with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, and there was some question as to whether she would appear on Fox News at all.
On CNBC, Cheney criticized Fox News host Sean Hannity for “enabling” Trump. Related Stories Late Night TV ‘SNL’ Cold Open Hits A Comedic Snowbank With Christmas Awards & No Giuliani From Kate McKinnon News New York Appeals Court Rejects Donald Trump’s Latest Effort To Sideline Judge’s Gag Order On Special Report on Monday, Baier told her, “We have a policy here to hear from all sides, and we wanted to invite you to talk about your book. ” The interview, which ran just short of 10 minutes, did not start with Cheney’s book but with Baier’s question about how she views President Joe Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.
“I’m worried that they’re getting to abandon Israel, and I think we’re in a situation where Hamas must be destroyed,” Cheney said, offering some criticism of the administration. But that fed into a point she made several times throughout the interview: Her opposition to Trump is not about policy, but of his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, including his conduct on January 6, 2021, along with what he has vowed to do in a second term. “He tells us every day,” she said.
“If you look at the steps he would have to take in terms of simply refusing to enforce court orders, or comply with court orders with which he disagrees, putting people in key positions …. unethical lawyers who would help him, frankly, blow through many of the guardrails in our Constitution. I think it is a very real concern.
” Then Baier read from a Wall Street Journal op ed from last week in which the writer, Allysia Finley, called the notion of “Trump as dictator” a “classic case of projection. ” Finley went on to claim that it is Biden who has abused executive power, ignored the law and “run roughshod over individual liberties,” while Trump “would have to contend with a hostile media and a federal bureaucracy that would be throwing pots, pans and candlesticks at him at every step. ” “Well, I think they’re wrong,” Cheney told Baier.
“We would not have to guess about what the next President Trump would do because he did it before. He would not have around him the people that were around him, frankly, the people that the country will hear from as his trial moves forward, who were all his appointees…people that told him on January 6th, as you and I were talking that day, actually, that he needed to tell the mob to go home. ” Baier, though, stuck with the op ed, contending that Cheney has not been vocal about Biden’s executive orders to cancel student loans, ban evictions and mandate Covid vaccines.
For a time, he and Cheney talked over one another. Cheney said that she didn’t think it was true that she had not weighed in on some of the topics, before making the point that Trump’s case was different. She even cited Baier’s own book on George Washington.
“The last chapter of your book is called “The Gift of a Peaceful Transition of Power. ” That is what we are talking about,” she said. “This is not about me,” Baier said.
“That’s right. But that’s a very important concept…. Every single president, Republican and Democrat, since George Washington, has ensured the peaceful transition of power.
Donald Trump tried to seize power. ” “This isn’t about policy. I voted with Donald Trump 93% of the time.
This is about the nation. It’s about the republic. It’s about the Constitution.
” Cheney, who was once a Fox News contributor, also seemed to be making an appeal to the Fox News workforce, invoking one of its late conservative commentators. “I come here to Fox, and I sit in the Charles Krauthammer green room, and I know how much, how revered Charles was, by you, by me,” she said. “And Charles taught us a whole bunch of things.
But one of them is that some things have to matter, and rising above politics, rising about partisanship, recognizing our duty to the Constitution, is the most conservative of all conservative principles. ”.
From: deadline
URL: https://deadline.com/2023/12/liz-cheney-donald-trump-fox-news-1235672046/