Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee and an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, delivered a searing rebuke of the former president on Wednesday, calling him a “dangerous and irrational man” and said that Republicans must choose between loyalty to him, or to the U.S. Constitution.
“We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before, and that is a former President who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic,” Cheney said at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, on Wednesday night.
“He is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man,” the Wyoming Republican told the crowd. “Even after all we’ve seen, they’re enabling his lies.”
“We have to choose, because Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution,” she said to applause from the crowd.
The speech comes as Cheney, one of just two Republicans on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, is set to debate her primary opponents in her home state of Wyoming on Thursday, including Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman.
The debate, hosted by the state’s PBS affiliate, will be closed to the public for security reasons.
Cheney has faced backlash from her own party for her full-throated opposition to Trump, including removal from her leadership role in the House GOP caucus and censure from the state’s Republican Party.
She acknowledged Wednesday that while it might make an “easier path” to ignore “the threat posed by Donald Trump,” she could not do so — and implored her fellow Republicans to do the same.
“No party and no people and no nation can defend and perpetuate a constitutional republic if they accept a leader who's gone to war with the rule of law, with the democratic process, or with a peaceful transition of power, with the Constitution itself,” she said.
The speech also came one day after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson delivered explosive testimony before the Jan. 6 panel, detailing that Trump dismissed warnings about armed protesters and desperately attempted to join his supporters as they marched on the Capitol ahead of the deadly insurrection.
Amid some pushback related to her statements, Cheney told ABC News’ “This Week” that she is “confident” in Hutchinson’s credibility and testimony.
"I am absolutely confident in her credibility,” Cheney said in an interview with “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "I'm confident in her testimony.”
Cheney said in her speech Wednesday night that “as the full picture is coming into view” through the Jan. 6 panel’s work, “it has become clear that the efforts Donald Trump oversaw and engaged in were even more chilling and threatening than we imagined.”
But, she said, she has “been incredibly moved by the young women, some of whom worked on the Trump campaign, some in the Trump White House, some as staffers on the Hill, who knew immediately that what happened on Jan. 6 must never happen again.”
Cheney praised Hutchinson’s “bravery and patriotism” in her testimony Tuesday, saying her actions were “awesome to behold.”
“Her superiors — men many years older — a number of them are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity and intimidation,” Cheney said of Hutchinson, adding that “little girls all across this great nation are seeing what it really means to love this country and what it really means to be a patriot.”
Cheney made an appeal to her fellow Republicans, saying that they must unite against threats to American democracy.
“We should work to build a future where we remember that, despite our differences, we are all Americans,” Cheney said. “Where our political battles and disagreements are intense, but where we do our best not to descend into vitriolic partisan attack.”
“But this time, this moment in our history, demands more,” she added. “We cannot let ourselves be torn apart. That is what our enemies hope for. We stand at the edge of an abyss, and we must pull back.”