The NPR Politics Podcast - House Republicans Oust Liz Cheney After Persistent Criticism of Donald Trump

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

She served as the Republican Conference Chair, the third-ranking leadership position among Republicans in the House. She intends to remain in Congress and says her criticism of Trump will continue.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey NPR, this is Amy from Toronto. After 15 years of post-secondary education and three degrees, I just finished my last exam on the road to becoming an orthopedic surgeon. This show was recorded at... It is 2.05 p.m. on May 12th on a Wednesday. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Enjoy the show. Wow, congratulations! That has got to feel good.

It has to feel really good. And hopefully she'll help a lot of people and make a lot of money. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. House Republicans have removed Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming from her party leadership post. They did this because she has continued to criticize former President Donald Trump

for his repeated and ongoing lies about the November election, as well as his role in the January 6th insurrection. Here she is after the vote. I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office. We have seen the danger that he continues to provoke with his language. We have seen his lack of commitment and dedication to the Constitution. So that doesn't sound like she's, you know, pulling back at all. It sounds like she's sticking to, you know, her position. Sue, there are a lot of fights in

Congress. This one has been a bit of a soap opera. You know, there was a vote, I'm sure people remember, to oust Cheney when you look back at the timeline of events. She clearly blames Donald Trump for what happened on January 6th for fomenting what she called the insurrection in the Capitol. She voted, she was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for impeachment. That was the vote that forced a vote back in February by some conservatives who wanted to throw her out just for that. She beat that back by a two-to-one margin on a secret ballot. But since then, she just hasn't let up. And every time Donald Trump pops up to say something about the election, to falsely claim that it was unfair or fraudulent,

or Joe Biden isn't the duly elected president, she's been a really forceful and vocal person pushing back on that. And it really has put her out of step with the vast majority of House Republicans who see this job, this job of conference chair, is really about message. It's about communicating what the majority of House Republicans think. It's about media strategy. And she just was not at all reflecting where House Republicans were when it comes to the issue of Donald Trump. So with relatively little fanfare this morning, they just brought up a resolution and by voice vote agreed to remove her as conference chair.

She persisted. She persisted. She would not be silenced. She kept bringing it up. And this was something that Republicans really don't want. They don't want to go back to January 6th and talk about that anymore. They don't want to talk even about the election anymore. They want to move on to 2022 and talk about the Biden agenda.

But Ron, what does this say about the Republican Party that saying something that seemingly Mitch McConnell agrees with or has said similar things And Kevin McCarthy, it doesn't seem like they necessarily disagree with what she's saying or saying that what she's saying is not true, but they've kicked her out of leadership. It's a difference of strategy between how to deal with Donald Trump and put him in the rearview mirror as much as possible. And Liz Cheney thinks the way to do it is to have a clean break and to say he was wrong. He did wrong. She supported him while he was president, but on January 6th, he lost her. And she wants to confront that and let the party cleanse itself. Whereas the elected leadership, as you say, has tried to downplay it,

soft pedal it, put it in the past. Don't bring it up. Don't bring it up. Please don't bring it up. Just let it be. I think that's a really good point, Ron, where you say that she wants the party to cleanse itself of Trump. But I think that what this confrontation shows is that the party itself does not, right? That's the conflict. She was out there today saying that she wants to be a leader to sort of return the Republican Party to what she sees as its Reagan era roots. And I don't think that that era exists anymore. What Trump has done to the Republican Party, we're going to be debating for quite some time. He might even run again in 2024. But that old era, that sort of Reagan, Bush, Cheney era of Republican conservatism seems over. This isn't a 50-50 civil war going on.

This is like a 95-5 with a couple of angry voices trying to push back against the overwhelming tide of where Republicans want to take the party. And that is a party that very much continues to embrace Donald Trump as a personality and as a force of politics. And really, as a leader, right, like Trump, while they may not want to, while McCarthy may not want to talk about the election, the person who keeps talking about the election, and it was interesting, Kevin McCarthy said today, and he was at the White House for another meeting, and he talked to the reporters afterwards, and he said this. First of all, the conference will decide, but I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with. We're sitting here with the president today. So from that point of view, I don't think that is all over with. We're sitting here with the president today. So from that point of

view, I don't think that's a problem. But the person who is questioning and continues to question the election is Donald Trump. And he says, you know, that it's a big lie and that he won. And he is the one that continues to do that. And, you know, he's put out statements today about what happened with Cheney, you know, insulting her, calling her name, saying she's a bitter, horrible human being. But if it is the Trump party, Trump is not trying to move on from the election. Like, he's just not. It's hard to imagine another time in the past where a House officer, such as Kevin McCarthy, leader of the Republicans in the House, has had to choose between members of his own caucus who think the president is named Joe Biden, as he just said today. I just sat with the president today was referring to Biden and people in his caucus who think the president is actually Donald Trump.

And there were people out on tour in this country right now with big names who are saying exactly that. This is a big reversal of fortune for Liz Cheney. When you talk about the old guard, that's what she represented. She was Republican Party royalty. This is a big, you know, fall for her in the GOP. It absolutely is. I mean, she was someone not too long ago who was viewed as someone who could potentially be on a presidential ticket one day. And now she's just in a world of trouble. I do think it speaks to the fact that she's really doing what she believes is right, because she's gained absolutely nothing politically from all of this. She's been censured by her state Republican Party. She's got a very long list of primary challengers.

I think Donald Trump has a very personal interest in trying to defeat her in 2022. I mean, you know, people sometimes come back in politics, but it's kind of hard to squint right now and see how Liz Cheney could do that. But as of today, you know, she says she's running for reelection. She is raising a good amount of money, certainly to run in Wyoming. And her attitude coming out of all of this is pretty combative. It's not one that is going to shrink and shy away.

She says she wants to be a leader in the anti-Trump movement and that she's not going to shut up. So I think we're going to continue to hear a lot more about Liz Cheney. And she might continue to be a thorn in House Republican side the way Trump is, where they keep wanting to try to talk about something else. And neither one of those forces seems to

be letting them do that. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this in a second. Today, it seems like everybody's got a bone to pick with the news. So it happens when somebody stops talking smack and just decides to wage all-out war. First thing you do in an evasion, you eliminate the communications of the enemy. And what happens if they win? Visit Stockton, California, for a story about a revolt against the mainstream media that's shaken up a city. From NPR's Invisibilia. And we're back. Ron, we were talking about earlier how it's hard to remember another time in recent political history that matches up to this. This is not what people generally are pushed out of leadership for. It's not even really a scandal. candle. But it is Liz Cheney is, as you said, she is an anti-Trump person in a Trump party,

and Trump is a one-term president who failed to win re-election. How does that work for the Republican Party? When did one-term presidents become so popular? Generally speaking, you go back over the last couple of generations, George H.W. Bush kind of disappeared after he lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. And Jimmy Carter really, really took a long fall after he lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980. So one-term presidents get labeled as failed, whether that's fair or not. And there's obviously been reassessment of both of those one-term presidents. But at the time, because they lost, because they lost kind of badly, they really stepped back and disappeared. And no one was suggesting that they were really leaving the party thereafter. And in fact, a lot of people were shocked that even George H.W. Bush's son was able

to come back eight years later and make a go of it and get the nomination in the Republican Party because his name was Bush. And that was anathema for quite a while in that period of time. So this is, look, Donald Trump is a disruptor. That's a word that's been used too much in recent times, but he is the disruptor. And all precedents and all past history and all indications of what you would expect from the past just simply don't seem to work in this world that Donald Trump has created over the last five, six years. And Sue, while the Republican Party may want to look forward, there's still those that are looking at what happened on January 6th, the insurrection. There were hearings in Congress today about it. And Cheney talked about that riot on the House floor yesterday.

So there's still a focus on what happened on January 6th. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is also a really fascinating part of this, too, but it hasn't got as much attention, is that they're still struggling on the Hill to decide whether or not they want to have a 9-11 style commission to investigate the January 6th attacks. What the delay has been is that Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell have been saying that they want to expand the scope of that commission to look at other violence, certainly around the Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests the year before. And that had also kind of been the party line, that we need to look at all political violence. And Liz Cheney, again, kind of blowing up the message of the party, said that's wrong, that we shouldn't do that. She said that that violence had its own causes and reasons and it's worthy of looking at, but we should look you know, look at January 6th as its own event. And I think that politically, a lot of Republicans are trying to buy Trump some cover there, right? You know, I mean, he did play a role in what happened on January 6th.

And I think muddying that water by trying to align it with things that happened with Black Lives Matter was a political strategy that Liz Cheney just thought was wrong. And in some ways, it might have had an effect because I do think it's sort of reignited these negotiations over the commission to move it forward a little bit. And Republicans haven't been using that talking point as much because she kind of just called BS on it. So I think that in those ways, she can still kind of be a forceful voice, but she's going to be a lonely voice. She doesn't really have much backup. And even in the days leading up to this vote, I mean, I think really the only couple of Congress people that you heard defending her, people like Adam Kinzinger, who's a Republican from Illinois,

who's like also kind of on that Cheney Island, and some senators who like her personally, who consider her friends, who know her family, who think that she's a good person and want her to have a place in the party, but she doesn't really have a lot of followers right now. Let's talk a little bit about who's expected to succeed Cheney in the number three post. Elise Stefanik, who is a representative from New York. She is a rising star, a moderate. She doesn't have like the sharp conservative bona fides that Liz Cheney has, but she is deeply connected to Trump or deeply loyal to Trump.

You know, she seems like she's on a glide path to get this leadership position, if only by the fact that no one else has stepped up to run for it and Trump has endorsed her for it and she has the support of top Republican leaders. But it's not going to be the smoothest path. There is some conservative pushback to her because of that more moderate voting record. She voted against the Trump tax cuts. In the past, she's voted for things like gay rights. There's pockets of conservatives saying maybe she also isn't the best messenger for the party here. But I think, you know, that Trump endorsement, again, if anything, this leadership fight displayed is that where you come down on Trump

is the most deciding factor. And if Trump is coming down on the side of Elise Stefanik, I'm not sure who could step up and make the case against her right now. All right, well, we'll leave it there for today. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.