Today, Explained - Liz Cheney is losing (and winning)

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

The Wyoming Republican will likely lose her primary, but she’s winning over a lot of Democrats in the process. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Amina Al-Sadi and Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lynn and I are so proud of Liz for standing up for the truth, doing what's right, honoring her oath to the Constitution, when so many in our party are too scared to do so. Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney is guaranteed three votes in her Wyoming primary race next Tuesday. Her mom's, her dad's, and her own. I am Dick Cheney. I proudly voted for my daughter. I hope you will too. She's not guaranteed much else. Her break with Donald Trump after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th has made her persona non grata among Republicans in her home state. And we're fed up with Liz Cheney.

But as vice chair of the January 6th committee, she's won over many Democrats. Liz Cheney's future coming up on today. Explained. Bet MGM authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about Bet MGM.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Leo Wolfson, state political reporter at the Cowboy State Daily in Cheyenne. Give me all the dirt on Liz Cheney. Who is she? Well, so Liz Cheney has had an interesting career in the state of Wyoming. She's obviously the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. She spent not a whole lot of her life growing up in Wyoming, but she did spend at least a few consecutive years.

There's kind of an on-off type of thing. Wyoming's always been my home. You know, when we left when I was 12, it was because my dad was elected to represent the people of Wyoming. I tell people it's not like I woke up one morning and said, hey, you know, let's relocate. She made a return to the state after a few stints in Washington, working with the State Department as an attorney, working with the George Bush re-election campaign in 2004. And she finally made a return to the state in full when she ran for U.S. Senate. As I've traveled to every corner of Wyoming, seeing old friends and meeting new, I've been honored to have had the chance to speak

with so many of you about your concerns, your fears, and your hopes for the future. This was kind of a flawed campaign. She made a number of critical errors, and most of all, she was going up against a sitting U.S. Senator that was highly popular, and she pulled the campaign about six months in, long before she ever got to election day. She came back to the well, so to speak, in 2016.

The eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney is taking one more shot at politics. Liz Cheney is running for Congress, we hear. Cheney is looking to replace Wyoming Congresswoman Cynthia Loomis, who plans to retire. And Liz had a pretty easy path to victory in that election. She won that by about 17% over the nearest competitor in the primary. Ms. Cheney beat seven other people, receiving 40% of the vote. Her nearest competitor got 23% support. It's a job that her father first won 40 years ago. And she won the general by an even larger sum. What is it about Liz Cheney historically that people in Wyoming have liked?

What are the character traits that she has that have appealed to people there, do you think? Well, she had a respected reputation because of her father's reputation. I think she was definitely running on that reputation quite a bit. My dad is a man of honor, a man of integrity, a man who's got the courage of his convictions, a man who clearly understood and understands today what it takes to make this nation strong, to keep the American people secure. And, you know, again, every time Barack Obama says, I'm no Dick Cheney, I think that anybody who knows Dick Cheney sort of nods their head and says, that's right, you're not Dick Cheney. And Dick Cheney himself was extremely popular in the state

while he was a congressman and vice president. When you're a member of the House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House calls on you not by name, but according to your state. And for better than a decade, I proudly answered to the title of the gentleman from Wyoming. So she had that familial recognition going for her, and she was just very conservative. I think that really appealed to a lot of the voters here. There were still some mutterings that she was a carpetbagger

and that she wasn't a true native Wyoming, even before all this happened. When somebody's never gotten a paycheck in Wyoming and has lived their whole adult life in Virginia. I think they should run from Virginia. That's their home state. People really hold people to a kind of a status of whether you're a true Wyoming resident or not. If you haven't spent your entire life in the state and or don't have family roots in the state, people absolutely look suspiciously at you. It certainly has not

done her campaign any favors. So Liz Cheney was elected to the House in 2016, the same year that Donald Trump was elected president, of course. What were her politics? Yeah, so like I said, just very conservative. President Obama has launched a war on our Second Amendment rights. He's launched a war on our religious freedom. She feels that the federal government was intervening in Wyoming issues way too much. And the federal government is a big presence of topic here in Wyoming because we have some of the most federal land in the country. And he's used the EPA to launch a war on Wyoming's ranchers, our farmers, and our energy industry. She's definitely kind of a climate change skeptic. She's definitely a foreign policy hawk. He has so effectively diminished our strength abroad that there's

no longer a question about whether this was his intent. Definitely of the George Bush administration, lieu of not being afraid to intervene in foreign issues, skirmishes, wars, things of that nature, definitely of that cadre. North Korea, they test a nuclear weapon, there are no consequences. They build a reactor for the Syrians, there are no consequences. And what they've learned is that their belligerence, in fact, oftentimes yields from us capitulation and concessions. The one thing that was kind of an interesting topic is same-sex marriage was kind of an always a little bit of a tricky thing for her. During her 2013 campaign, she spoke out

against same-sex marriage and said she was against it despite her sister being married to a woman. And that caused a big issue in her campaign because her sister actually went on Facebook after that was said and spoke out against it. And there was kind of a rift in the family for a number of years there until essentially 2021. She did a 60 Minutes interview where she said that she made a mistake. I was wrong. I love my sister very much. I love her family very much. And I was wrong. And then this past summer, she voted in support of this Respect for Marriage Act codifying same-sex marriage in America.

So there's something super interesting here about her and about conservatism, which is like Liz Cheney's conservatism is like her dad's and like George Bush's. This is a certain type of conservative. And then along comes Donald Trump and he is a Republican, but he's certainly not a Bush type conservative conservative or a Cheney-type conservative, right? No. Is Liz Cheney at this point, at the point where Trump is elected, is she on the Trump train or is she sort of holding her nose and saying, you know, I'm more of a Bush Republican? You know, to be honest, there was never a point where she really went against Trump in that era. She supported his 2016 campaign, especially when he got the Republican nominee at the convention. And she was very consistent in supporting him.

However, on the issue of some of those foreign policy things, she did speak out against some of the stances that Trump made, especially in 2019 with his decision on Syria. There was also comments that Trump made himself speaking out against the George W. Bush administration, some of the actions they took with so-called never-ending wars and things of that nature. So it wasn't hard to draw conclusions that there was definitely disagreements between the two camps. But once again, you got to go back to the voting record and look that she voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time. So if there was a divide, it was not very public. When did she finally break with Donald Trump? So it was a very clear break that occurred after the 2020 election.

After Trump started questioning the results of the 2020 election, Cheney implored him to go to the courts and prove his evidence. And then following that, after the evidence did not prove out in the courts, she just started speaking out against him at that point and saying that he needed to concede defeat in the election. Then you fast forward a couple more weeks. And January 6th happens. That was kind of really what kicked off everything. Senators, congressmen, their staffers were quickly whisked into a secure location.

She got ushered, just like many other members of Congress, into an underground bunker of sorts at the Capitol. She was literally minutes away, I believe, from some of the rioters from getting to her and her team. At one point, there was an instance Representative Jim Jordan had tried to give her a hand, and she slapped his hand away, saying something to the effect of, this is all your fault. I thought clearly that the lie that they had been spreading and telling people had absolutely contributed to what we were living through at that moment. She said it brought back memories of when her father was ushered into the underground PEOC bunker on 9-11, but this was a threat to her of a domestic nature. And at this moment, when it matters most, we are also confronting a domestic threat

that we've never faced before. A former president who's attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic, aided by political leaders who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man. And I think it really, it was a day that really scarred her as far as on a personal basis of her experience that day. Immediately after January 6th, a lot of Republicans are very angry with Donald Trump. And for a couple of days, they remain angry with Donald Trump. And then all of a sudden, over the coming weeks, many of them, most of them overwhelmingly, start to walk back their criticisms of Donald Trump. And start to suggest that the attack on the Capitol had been exaggerated and that Donald Trump hadn't really done anything.

Why didn't Liz Cheney back off too? It's been the same reason she hasn't backed off this entire time. She's just asserted that it's a duty, her oath to the Constitution, and just an oath that she made to her office when taking office that she just feels this is the right thing to do. All of us who are elected officials take an oath that we swear under God to the Constitution. And that oath has to mean something.

And that oath means that we cannot embrace and enable a president as dangerous as Donald Trump is. She's not making moves that are probably winning her favors with most of the voters in Wyoming. So it does give credence that she legitimately feels like this is her constitutional duty to be following through on speaking out against what President Donald Trump has done. The select committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol will be in order. As you watch these hearings, what's standing out to you about Cheney? She's just very consistent. She's giving no openings to any conspiracy theories or any credence to Trump or his supporters' arguments that the election was rigged or that he had zero connection to the January 6th Capitol riot. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child.

Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. She's very composed. There doesn't seem to be a lot of high or low emotion from her, and she isn't giving an inch. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American. And he was told this over and over again. What has happened to her within the Republican establishment since she took on this role? So she lost her House leadership position in May of 2021. She was censored by the Wyoming Republican Party and the Republican National Committee over the past year as well. She is completely at odds with the Wyoming Republican Party as far as its leadership. She has spoken out against the

chairman of the party, Frank Ethorn, who was a former Oath Keeper and was at the January 6th Capitol riot standing on the periphery. And she refuses to attend events hosted by that organization because of his status and who he is. So she has found herself in a tough position because she has kind of eliminated a faction of potential supporters in the state, but she really does not seem to at least care or express that she cares to any degree. For her, like I said, it's strictly an issue of constitutional duty. These are some of the side effects of some of the actions she's been taking. And we got to get rid of the weak Congress people, the ones that aren't any good, the Liz Cheney's of the world. We got to get rid of them. If Liz Cheney could even find Wyoming

on a map and went there, she would find a lot of very angry cowboys. Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up Thank you. photos, and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos.

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in Cheyenne. Now let's talk about this primary. Coming up on August 16th, recent polling from the Casper Star Tribune shows that her challenger, Harriet Hageman, is ahead by about 20 points. Tell me everything you know about Harriet Hageman. Who is she? Yeah, so she spent pretty much her whole life in Wyoming. She's a land and water attorney, but she's generally well-respected in the state, especially within the Republican Party.

She ran for governor in 2018, and she finished third, a close third in that election. And that kind of really brought her up on the state radar as far as politics. She was involved in state politics before that. She was kind of a prominent delegate within the Wyoming Republican Party, and she was very active at the National Convention in 2016 for the Republican Party. And she even went as far as calling Trump the weakest candidate and a xenophobe. Now, since then, she has walked back those comments and she said she was misled by Democrats and the media in making those comments. And then, of course, when she got President Trump's endorsement back in September 2021, that kind of sealed the deal

for many voters right then and there. That was for a lot of people, and they've even said as much as that that's all they needed to hear. Okay, so in this upcoming primary, what is Harriet Hageman's argument? What is her platform? What's she focusing on? So the forefront of her campaign is that Wyoming is not being represented in Washington. And she obviously, she brings the Liz Cheney's role in the January 6th committee and speaking out against Trump, the forefront of her campaign. She's claimed that Cheney has betrayed Wyoming residents and left them out to dry, so to speak. And one of her big campaign speeches is called Fed Up. We're fed up with a federal government that

doesn't seem to work for us anymore. We're fed up with out of control spending and we're fed up with the radical Biden agenda. And she just goes through a litany of things that Wyoming residents are fed up with. Inflation, Joe Biden. We're fed up with $6 gasoline and $6 diesel. We're fed up with a shortage of fertilizer for our farmers and with the supply chain that has been broken by the incompetence of our federal agencies. And, of course, Liz Cheney is kind of like the final punchline on that speech. And we're fed up with Liz Cheney.

Her and Cheney, to be honest, are not super different politically aside from their thoughts on President Donald Trump. Hageman might be a little bit more conservative on certain issues, but they're both very skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic and its origins.

And they are just very consistent with being pro-fossil fuels and skeptical of green energy and climate change. So when Liz Cheney makes her pitch to the people of Wyoming, what is her message? Does she say, Harriet and I agree about everything? The thing we don't agree about is Donald Trump? How is she working this very big thing into her campaign message?

You know, it's funny. She doesn't really work Hageman into that narrative so much as just talking about herself and Donald Trump. And she really sees this election purely as a battle between her and Donald Trump. If we set aside our founding principles for the politics of the moment, the miracle of our constitutional republic will slip away. We must not let that happen. She's certainly made it a key focus of her campaign. Of course, she's touched on other issues and talking about how she thinks she's a great representative for Wyoming voters and

things of that nature. But I mean, it would be untrue to say that the focus on Donald Trump and his actions are not the key focus of her campaign. And in line with that, I mean, one of the things that has happened, we know this from very good both local and national reporting, is that Liz Cheney has all of a sudden begun to appeal to Democratic voters. Yeah, it's very interesting to see who and where she's getting her donations from. Wyoming has had a very small proportion of her overall campaign donations and to a certain extent that does play into the state's small population of course but it is so grossly out of alignment in proportion to some of these other states so for instance if you look at some of the

FEC data from the second quarter that ended on June 30th Cheney had earned around $338,000 from Wyoming donors and around $828,000 from Virginia donors at that same deadline. This pales in comparison to what she made from California donors, which was $1.2 million at that same time frame. And just some of the names are just really interesting to see where her support has come from. There is a Biden supporter in California who previously sat on the Yahoo board, who is a part owner in the San Francisco Giants baseball organization who has donated to her campaign. Melinda Gates, former wife of Bill Gates, has donated to her campaign. The list goes on and on. With voters in Wyoming, to be honest,

the finance information hasn't maybe struck as much of a strong chord as it would in other states or maybe as one might expect, because I think for Wyoming residents, so much of it still just comes down to whether you're there in person and you're making those connections. And all the money involved is almost kind of superfluous to a lot of people, in my personal opinion. But it, of course, sets Cheney up for a potential presidential run in 2024 if she wants to do that. She has about $7.4 million cash in hand in her war chest right now, which is a very unlikely amount that she'll be spending before now and

Election Day. And the primary election will pretty much dictate the winner of the general, realistically, in Wyoming. Has she given any indication? She has not. But she has not ruled out running for president when asked about it multiple times. I haven't made a decision about that yet. And I'm obviously very focused on my reelection. I'm very focused on the January 6th committee. I'm very focused on my obligations to do the job that I have now. She's very much, I'm sure, thinking about her dad and trying to accomplish great goals before he passes away someday. And she's very close with her father. She talks to him on an almost daily basis. Liz is fearless.

She never backs down from a fight. There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office. And she will succeed. She has a lot of work to do if she wants to run for president. In theoretical polls for 2024 candidates, she's running way behind Governor DeSantis and Trump in the polls.

And even though she may have $7 million cash in hand after this election, it's a tiny amount compared to what DeSantis, who has raised over $100 million, and Trump, who has also raised over $100 million in his pack, have raised for a potential presidential run in 2024 for their respective campaigns. But it makes you wonder, with some of the ties that she's been building with some Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, it makes one wonder that she might not seek out a cabinet position someday, perhaps in a Democrat president's office. It could be something that would look very good for a Democrat president to have a bipartisan presence in their cabinet. And she does have legitimate foreign policy experience and is something you can tell that she's very interested and passionate about. So that could be another avenue she might pursue in the future. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn. It is her first show with us. Thank you, Amanda. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. It was engineered by Afim Shapiro. The rest of our team includes Halima Shah, Hadi Mouagdi, Victoria Chamberlain,

Avishai Artsy, Miles Bryan, and Tori Dominguez, and the co-host with the co-most, Sean Ramos-Firm. Our supervising producer is Amina El-Sadi. We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld, and we're distributed to public radio stations across these United States in partnership with WNYC. I'm Noelle King. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.