Cheney Bashes GOP: McCarthy Should Not Be Speaker, Cruz and Hawley ‘Unfit for Future Office’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “completely unfaithful to the Constitution” and senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are “unfit for future office,” during an interview that aired on Sunday.

“He’s been completely unfaithful to the Constitution, and demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the significance and the importance of the role of speaker,” Cheney said when This Week host Jon Karl asked her if America would be “better or worse off” if McCarthy would become the next speaker of the House.

“The speaker of the House is the second in line for the presidency. It requires somebody who understands and recognizes their duty, their oath, their obligation,” Cheney said.

“I don’t believe [McCarthy] should be speaker of the House,” she added.

Cheney and McCarthy have been at odds ever since the congresswoman became a harsh critic of Donald Trump. McCarthy even endorsed Cheney’s electoral opponent, Harriet Hageman, who defeated Cheney in the GOP primary last week. “We’ll win the majority and I’ll be speaker,” McCarthy told Fox News the day before the primary.

Karl also asked Cheney her thoughts on elected officials who push the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. “You’ve said you’re going to work against election deniers,” the host said. “If it’s not Trump and if it’s somebody like Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, these are all people that have tied themselves very closely to Trump, will you oppose them? Could you see yourself supporting any of them?”

“It would be very difficult,” Cheney answered. “I think that a fundamental question for me in terms of whether or not someone is fit to be president is whether they’ve abided by their constitutional obligations in the past. And I think, certainly, when you look at somebody like Josh Hawley or somebody like Ted Cruz, both of whom know better — both of whom know exactly what the role of Congress is in terms of our constitutional obligations with respect to presidential elections — and yet, both of whom took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order and structure in the aftermath of the last election. So in my view, they both have made themselves unfit for future office.”

As for DeSantis, Cheney said that he is “campaigning for election deniers.” “That is something that I think people have got to have real pause about,” she said. “You know, either you fundamentally believe in and will support our constitutional structure, or you don’t.”

Cheney also criticized members of her party for attacking the FBI in the wake of its search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and seizure of classified and sensitive documents he was storing there. “I was ashamed to hear Republicans immediately and reflexively attack the FBI agents who executed a search warrant. I was disgusted when I learned that President Trump had released the names of those agents when he released the unredacted search warrant.”

Cheney continued, “And that has now caused violence, we’ve seen threats of violence. The judge, himself, the synagogue had to cancel services because of threats of violence. This is a really dangerous moment… To jump reflexively to attack law enforcement and to say then, you know, well, we back the blue, but we’re going to attack these people for doing their job. I think the American people see what hypocrisy that is and it’s dangerous hypocrisy.”