Liz Cheney Confuses JD Vance's Logic Centers, Which Are Set To Evil
If he only had a soul ...
JD Vance is a singularly graceless liar, and like all liars, his most blatant falsehoods reveal a telling truth about himself. During an event last weekend in Wisconsin, Vance sank to the challenge when asked his opinion of former House Rep. Liz Cheney.
“That’s too easy,” answered Vance, for whom moral cowardice is hardly difficult. “That is too easy. My opinion of Liz Cheney is low. Is that good enough?”
Vance claimed he had insight from a “lot of people in Washington who have served with Liz Cheney and what they will tell you to a person is Liz Cheney is motivated by an obsessive hatred of the people who caused her Wyoming congressional seat [loss.]”
This is of course untrue. It’s unlikely Republicans who’ve served with Cheney are spilling tea to the first-term senator who’s rarely at the Senate. The timing is also twisted. Cheney stood up for democracy and against Trump when she opposed his coup attempt prior to January 6. Immediately after the Capitol attack, she fully rejected Trump.
“We just had a violent mob assault the Capitol in an attempt to prevent us from carrying out our Constitutional duty,” Cheney told Fox News on January 6. “There is no question that the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame.”
Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican at this point, wasn’t alone in denouncing Trump, at first. Even CNN’s official MAGA gaslighter Scott Jennings wrote on January 6, “President Donald Trump caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election process being rigged against him. It was not stolen, but this madness was fomented by the President and his top advisers over the past several months.”
Nikki Haley told Tim Alberta at Politico shortly after January 6, “We need to acknowledge [Trump] let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
During a Meet the Press interview on January 17, Rep. Nancy Mace said, “I want to be a new voice for the Republican Party, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve spoken out so strongly against the president, against these QAnon conspiracy theorists that led us in a constitutional crisis. It’s just wrong, and we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
Kevin McCarthy said on the House floor that Trump’s actions warranted “congressional action, which is why I think a fact-finding commission and a censure resolution would be prudent.” Of course, the House minority leader wanted to become the House speaker, so he quickly sold his soul to Trump, who was probably able to make change.
Not standing down
MAGA constantly projects their worst traits onto others. JD Vance called Liz Cheney a “resentful, petty, small person,” who’s not motivated by “love of this country” but by vengeance. Obviously, this only accurately applies to Donald Trump, who wanted to punish anyone who failed to embrace his Big Lie about the 2020 election. He reserved his greatest enmity for the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him after January 6. Trump actively endorsed primary challenges and conducted what Politico called a “scorched earth revenge tour” against them. Only two of the 10 made it past their 2022 primaries.
The Wyoming GOP censured Cheney for her impeachment vote, but she still survived an early attempt to remove her from House leadership. If she’d remained quiet, she could’ve kept her position, but instead, she was determined to turn the GOP away from Trump. What she soon realized was that GOP had willingly surrendered itself to Trump.
Lindsey Graham told Fox News in May 2021, “Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no. I’ve always liked Liz Cheney but she’s made a determination that the Republican Party can’t grow with President Trump. I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.”
“She just believes he’s disqualified himself by his conduct, more than it’s any kind of political analysis,” Graham told the Washington Post. “If you look at a political analysis, there’s no way this party is going to stay together without President Trump and his supporters. There is no construct where the party can be successful without him.”
Graham’s cynical, defeatist position was hardly one borne from a “love of country.” Graham craved power, and he believed that Trump “owned” MAGA voters. Their allegiance is to him personally rather than to any larger ideology. Thus, the GOP is effectively a cult of personality. Unfortunately, he proved correct. After all, the 2024 Republican presidential primary tested this theory. Trump, under multiple felony indictments, soundly defeated Nikki Haley and even Ron DeSantis, once billed as Trump without the baggage.
(Watch clip below from Acyn of Cheney advising that no one “listen to Lindsey Graham. It’s good life advice.”)
Cheney was ousted from her leadership role in May 2021 because she spoke the heresy that Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance has no problem promoting the Big Lie. It’s easy when you lack a conscience.
The Republican National Committee censured both Cheney and Adam Kinzinger because they were on the January 6 committee. She knew her political career was over if she defied Trump but she did so anyway, despite the critical mass of GOP groveling around her.
During her 2022 primary concession speech, Cheney noted that she’d won her 2020 primary with 73 percent of the vote.
“I could easily have done the same again,” she said. “The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.”
“That was a path I could not and would not take.”
That path might’ve also led her to the speaker’s gavel. If she’d signed Trump’s oath of supremacy, she could’ve kept her leadership position and likely stepped in after McCarthy’s inevitable fall. (No one that stupid and weak ever holds power for long.)
Just a few years earlier, Cheney was considered “one of the few bright spots” for the GOP after the 2018 Blue Wave election. She frequently defended Trump on cable news, but that loyalty meant nothing to the mad MAGA king. Mike Pence can probably relate.
Vance, who’s seemingly incapable of shame, listed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Nikki Haley as part of MAGA’s big tent. Trump has personally attacked both of them (including their own spouses). He’s somewhat made nice with Kemp because he needs his help in Georgia, but he remains crudely dismissive of Haley.
“Nikki Haley and I fought and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points,” he said on Fox News last Friday. “I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody's ever been beaten by. I beat Nikki badly.”
Haley will probably still campaign for Trump if he finally asks, but she’ll do so knowing it’s wrong. She cares more about her future in GOP politics than she does a functioning democracy.
Cheney didn’t endorse Harris for petty reasons. They aren’t united over their mutual contempt of Trump but a shared love of their country.
"We have the chance to say we are going to reject cruelty,” Cheney said at an event in Pennsylvania. “We are going to reject the kind of vile vitriol we have seen from Donald Trump. We are going to reject the misogyny that we have seen from Donald Trump and JD Vance.”
Vance boasted that MAGA got the better deal when they traded Cheney for Garbage Pail Kids Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. I’m sure he believes that. There’s no room for honest people in Trump’s GOP.
People who should know better, and probably do, but who back trump and his big lie, because they think that it will lead to power, have no moral compass. Vance, Haley, McCarthy, Johnson, and McConnell are the most visible of such weirdos. I can't imagine the hell that they have made for themselves, but it's of their own doing. They sold their souls, and not even to Satan. but to a conman, a felon, a rapist, a traitor - DonOld Trump.
Liz Cheney can live with herself, because she did the right thing. I applaud her courage in rejecting power in order to save democracy.
I'll never forgive the GOP for putting me back on the same side with the Cheneys.