Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday that she will do everything possible, including a potential 2024 presidential run, to prevent former President Donald Trump from entering the Oval Office again.
Cheney, who has become one of the most vocal voices in the Republican Party against Trump, made the comment in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” arguing the Republican Party “will shatter” if Trump becomes the GOP presidential nominee.
“I think the party has either to come back from where we are right now, which is a very dangerous and toxic place, or the party will splinter and there will be a new conservative party that rises,” Cheney told anchor Chuck Todd, adding that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee, “the party will shatter and there will be a conservative party that rises in its place.”
Todd continued by telling Cheney that some Americans believe that if she “would be a third-party candidate” in the 2024 presidential elections, it would potentially “be enough to stop Trump” from becoming president again.
“Well, we’ll do whatever it takes as I said,” she responded. “He will not be president again.”
Trump has not made any definitive statements on whether he would run for the nation’s highest office, but he has strongly suggested that he would in numerous speeches and interviews after departing office in January 2021.
Todd also asked Cheney, who said in mid-August that she was considering running for president but hasn’t yet made a decision on the matter, what it would take for her to run for president and face Trump.
“Look, I’m going to be very focused on all the things we’ve been talking about and I care deeply, as I know you do, as millions of people do, about this nation and about the blessing that we have as a constitutional republic,” Cheney said.
“I am focused on what we’ve got to do to save the country from this very dangerous moment we’re in,” she added, “not right now on whether I’m going to be a candidate or not.”
Cheney, who has been called a “Republican in name only” by others in her party and lost the Republican primary to Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman in August, said in September that she will not remain a Republican if Trump is the GOP presidential nominee in 2024.
Cheney also said that she would be willing to campaign for Democrats to stop GOP nominee Kari Lake from being elected in the Arizona gubernatorial race.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Kari Lake is not elected,” Cheney said.
When asked by Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith whether doing everything she can to ensure Lake is not elected includes campaigning for Democrats, Cheney simply stated, “Yes.”
Former television anchor Lake, who is endorsed by Trump, won the Republican nomination in the Arizona primary election in August. Lake has been vocal in alleging fraud in the 2020 election and has pledged to improve election security if she wins the gubernatorial race.
Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. She is also one of two Republican members sitting on the Democrat-led House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
Epoch Times reporter Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.