Liz Cheney warns that Trump won't leave office if he's elected to a second term and says voting for him 'may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in'
Liz Cheney said former President Trump has already tried to remain in office and would do so again.
The ex-congresswoman made the remarks on NBC's "Today," where she spoke out against his candidacy.
Cheney's forthcoming book, "Oath and Honor," will be released on Tuesday.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday said "there's no question" that former President Donald Trump will refuse to leave office if he wins a second term next year and warned that a vote for the ex-president "may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in."
During an interview on NBC's "Today," the former Wyoming congresswoman told Savannah Guthrie that the upcoming election would be a vote on the preservation of democracy in the United States. And she said that Trump was already angling to remain in power should he win back the White House.
"There's no question," she said. "Absolutely. He's already done it once. ... He's already attempted to seize power, and he was stopped, thankfully, and for the good of the nation and the republic."
"But he said he will do it again," she continued. "He's expressed no remorse for what he did."
Cheney, whose forthcoming book, "Oath and Honor," will be released on Tuesday, also said it is important that undecided voters realize that a vote for the former president is not a wise choice should he emerge as the GOP nominee and stand as the party's nominee in the general election.
"I think that's a real problem, and I think that the challenge is to make sure that those people understand and recognize that a Trump vote is not acceptable," she said. "[T]hat choice can never be Donald Trump because a vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in."
Cheney, a former House Republican Conference chair and former vice chair of the House January 6 committee, was first elected to Congress in 2016, the same year that Trump was elected to the presidency. During Trump's first term, Cheney quickly rose in the leadership ranks within the GOP and was often bandied about as a future speaker.
But the January 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol transformed the dynamic of their relationship. Cheney emerged as Trump's most vocal GOP critic and voted to impeach him for incitement of insurrection. She consistently railed against his influence within the party, needling him over his numerous attempts to overturn the 2020 election, to the point where the Republican caucus — then led by Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California — eventually voted to remove her from party leadership.
On the January 6 committee, Cheney was perhaps the most prominent face on the panel as one of two Republicans (the other being Adam Kinzinger) who worked alongside Democrats in seeking accountability for the violence that disrupted the certification of now-President Joe Biden's 2020 victory.
Cheney sought renomination as the GOP nominee for her at-large seat in August 2022, but lost the primary to now-Rep. Harriet Hageman.
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