Liz Cheney wants Trump’s ‘co-opted’ GOP to lose House majority

Former Republican lawmaker warns US is ‘sleepwalking into dictatorship’

Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman and one of Donald Trump’s greatest foes, has given a dire warning about the possibility of the former president returning to the White House.

Speaking on CBS Sunday Morning she even went as far as saying she would like the GOP to lose its House majority to prevent “collaborator” Mike Johnson from holding onto his role as speaker.

Ms Cheney spoke with John Dickerson of CBS News about the looming danger to democracy posed by Mr Trump as explored in her new book Oath and Honor.

After saying that Mr Johnson was “absolutely” a collaborator in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Ms Cheney was asked what would happen if he is still speaker come January 2025.

“He can’t be. You know, we’re facing a situation with respect to the 2024 election, where it’s an existential crisis and we have to ensure that we don’t have a situation where an election that might be thrown into the House of Representatives is overseen by a Republican majority.”

Dickerson then asked if she would prefer to see a Democratic Party majority.

Ms Cheney explained: “I believe very strongly in those principles and ideals that have defined the Republican Party, but the Republican Party of today has made a choice and they haven’t chosen the Constitution. And so I do think it’s, it presents a threat if the Republicans are in the majority in January 2025.”

The former representative for Wyoming has said that if Mr Trump is re-elected it would be the end of the republic and hopes to break through the public’s political numbness to lay out the case for why he is such a threat to the Constitution.

“He’s told us what he will do. People who say, ‘well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances’, don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted. One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States,” she told Dickerson.

Ms Cheney was also asked if she believes the former president and current frontrunner in the Republican Party primary is a fascist.

“I think that he certainly is employing fascist techniques. I think that the the tools that he’s using are tools that we’ve seen, used by authoritarians, fascist tyrants around the world, you know, the things that he has said and done, in some ways are so outrageous that we have become numb to them,” she said.

“What I believe is the cause of our time is that we not become numb that we understand the warning signs that we understand the danger, and that we ignore partisan politics to stop him.”

Ms Cheney was one of two Republican lawmakers, alongside former congressman Adam Kinzinger, to sit on the House select committee to investigate the events leading up to the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, and then-president Donald Trump’s role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and incite the violence that followed.

Speaker Johnson assumed the role of speaker of the House following the ousting of Rep Kevin McCarthy.

Following the expulsion of disgraced former congressman George Santos and the vacancy it created, the Republican Party has a majority of just eight, controlling 221 districts to the Democrats’ 213.