It’s not just the Trump family who’s happy to see prominent ‘NeverTrumper’ Rep. Liz Cheney booted from Congress.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz was also celebrating Cheney’s drubbing at the hands of lawyer Harriet Hageman in the Wyoming Republican primary on Tuesday. Hageman, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, thumped Cheney by a 66-29 margin on Tuesday.
In an interview on Real America’s Voice on Wednesday night, Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican, mocked the incumbent for what he characterized as a “cataclysmic defeat.”
“The voters of Wyoming have sent her home – back home to Northern Virginia,” Gaetz told RAV host Dr. Gina Loudon.
The congressman also said Cheney’s lopsided defeat should be seen as a “true final verdict” on the House Democrats’ special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
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Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi personally selected Cheney and another anti-Trump Republican, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, to be the GOP tokens on the panel.
Cheney and the Democrats, Gaetz said, predicted the probe into the riot would “blow the top off the Capitol.”
“In reality,” he added, “it just blew the tires off Liz Cheney’s political career.”
Cheney and Kinzinger were two of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after his supporters rioted on Jan. 6.
Gaetz argued that the vote cost Cheney her re-election bid, in a state that produced Trump’s largest margin of victory in 2020.
“The margin of defeat,” Gaetz said, “tells us a lot about the likeability of Liz Cheney. That she wasn’t able to coalesce anything over 30 percent of the vote with all of those crossover votes [from Democrats who switched parties] shows that she has a real likeability problem that isn’t going to be constrained to Wyoming.”
That was a reference to Cheney’s coy suggestion that she may run for president in 2024.
“The only real estate where Liz Cheney is popular is inside the Beltway of Washington, D.C., and the only constituency that wants her to run for president are New York- and Washington-based TV bookers for corporate media,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz prominently came out against Cheney in the immediate aftermath of Trump leaving office.
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In January 2021 he went to Wyoming to campaign against Cheney’s re-election.
“We are in a battle for the soul of the Republican party, and I intend to win it,” Gaetz said at the time. “You can help me break a corrupt system. You can send a representative who actually represents you, and you can send Liz Cheney home – back home to Washington, DC.”
In a separate tweet, he added, “Wyoming can do better.”
On Wednesday, Gaetz also ridiculed Cheney’s concession speech — in which the three-term congresswoman audaciously compared herself to Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant — and the idea she may run for president.
“Of course someone with the lack of self-awareness of Liz Cheney would get walloped by a margin of 2 to 1 by her own voters and say, ‘You know what, it’s time to take my loser show national,” said Gaetz.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.
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