David Remnick: We've seen in recent months and weeks something absolutely unprecedented in politics. A range of prominent security and military officials and Republican politicians have not only come out against Donald Trump, but they've also declared him a security threat, unfit, and in some cases, a fascist. Let's not lose sight of how unique that is. Way out in front of this trend was Liz Cheney. Up until 2021, Cheney was the third-ranking Republican in Congress. Then, after the January 6th insurrection, Cheney voted to impeach Donald Trump, and she served as vice chair of the House committee investigating January 6th. She knew that would cost her her seat in Congress, and it did. Wyoming voters sent her packing.

Since I last spoke with Liz Cheney about her memoir, Oath and Honor, she's taken the step of campaigning on behalf of Vice President Harris. We spoke last week at The New Yorker Festival.

Liz Cheney: I've obviously been around campaigns for a long time, having had, I think, a perspective that very few people have, having been deeply involved and engaged inside Republican presidential politics, and now on the other side. When I look at having spent time on the road campaigning with Vice President Harris, having watched her interact with and talk to independent voters, undecided voters, we are a very closely divided nation, there's no question. When you think about, at the end of the day, what is really moving people is what a second Trump term would mean for the women of this country.

I say this as someone who has been pro-life, but there are women across this country who are watching what's happening in places like Texas, in places like North Carolina, who are watching state legislatures make decisions that are preventing women from getting fundamental basic health care. At the end of the day, when you look at the percentages of women who vote versus percentages of men, I think that we will see absolutely that you've got a lot more people who will be voting for Vice President Harris, who may not be saying it publicly, but at the end of the day, it'll be enough to pull her over the edge.

[applause]

David Remnick: Just to put a little pressure on that point, in terms of prediction. In 2016, the polls under-polled Donald Trump. In 2020, that happened again, in fact, rather severely in some states. Why won't that happen again?

Liz Cheney: I think there are a couple of things going on. One is that you've got polling and modeling that has been changed specifically because of that. Secondly, what we have seen each time is that Donald Trump really has a ceiling.

David Remnick: You were campaigning with Kamala Harris two weeks ago, three weeks ago.

Liz Cheney: Last week.

David Remnick: You were in a really resonant place. You were in Ripon, Wisconsin.

Liz Cheney: That was a couple of weeks ago, yes.

David Remnick: You made a joint appearance with her. This is the birthplace of the Republican Party. It was a beautiful day. It's a very pretty town. I've been there. The crowd is chanting, "Thank you, Liz," and as you began to speak, you choked up.

Liz Cheney: Well, it was unexpectedly moving for me. There were a couple of reasons. The Harris campaign had asked me a couple of days earlier what I wanted my walk-on music to be, which I hadn't anticipated needing walk-on music.

[laughter]

Liz Cheney: I happened to be with one of my daughters when the request came in, and she immediately said, "Change, Taylor Swift. Taylor's version, Change." There are some wonderful lines in there, like, "They may be bigger, but we're faster and we're never scared." When I first walked on stage, I heard Change playing and I looked over and I saw my daughter and she was emotional. It was very nice to hear people saying thank you. It was also just a moment that felt like it was a bigger moment than politics. To be there, to be saying, "Look, as a country, we only survive if we elect people who are going to abide by their oaths of office," and to be there where the Republican Party was founded-- I was born in Wisconsin also, so it always feels like coming home.

Looking at this question of, "Are we going to have a president who's a fundamentally cruel and depraved person, or are we going to elect Kamala Harris, who--" She and I don't agree on a number of issues, but, man, I absolutely know that she's going to do what she believes is right for our country, and she's going to abide by the Constitution.

David Remnick: Trump ran against Nikki Haley in the primary. Nikki Haley here and there did quite well. Certainly, a lot of votes that could mean a lot in swing states if they swing to Harris. Nikki Haley, of course, after saying horrendous things about Donald Trump, has endorsed Donald Trump. Do you think her voters will vote for Donald Trump?

Liz Cheney: Well, I think you left out a few swings of the Nikki Haley pendulum. She's had a couple of--

David Remnick: Yes, I did.

Liz Cheney: I have been talking to and meeting with people who supported Nikki Haley, and they are voting for Kamala Harris. I don't think there's anything, frankly, that Nikki Haley could do to get those voters to vote for Donald Trump. Many of them, I think you will see-- In early voting even already, you're beginning to see that they're voting for Vice President Harris.

David Remnick: In recent days, we've read accounts of how the former chief of staff, John Kelly, and others have described how Donald Trump has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler. Mark Milley, who's the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that Trump is a fascist. You've heard the F-word is very much in the air. Is Donald Trump a fascist?

Liz Cheney: I think that you'd be hard-pressed to say he's not. Everybody has to stop and think to themselves, "This is Donald Trump's longest-serving chief of staff." I think it's really important to take a step back, and this goes back to your first question, which is that we have this unprecedented coalition, this unprecedented wave of support for Vice President Harris that you've never seen before, at least in modern political history, from Republicans. Frankly, some of the bravest people who have stood up are people like the mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin, very Republican area of Wisconsin, long-serving Republican mayor, who has come out publicly and said, "I'm voting for Vice President Harris."

When you see that, those people don't have to do that. I believe there'll be millions of Americans who just cast the vote and don't speak publicly. That also tells you where we are.

David Remnick: Why isn't it more? Mitch McConnell, in a book that's about to be published, I think it's an oral history, Mitch McConnell calls Trump, "Stupid. A despicable human being. Unfit." Mitch McConnell endorses Donald Trump. I don't. Well, yes.

[laughter]

David Remnick: Could you help me with that?

Liz Cheney: Throughout that whole period, first of all, if McConnell had voted to convict him, we wouldn't be where we are today. Donald Trump would have been convicted.

[applause]

Liz Cheney: McConnell's approach for a lot of the period since January 6th was let's just ignore him. If you just ignore him, don't talk about him, he'll go away. Then when that quit working, McConnell decided to endorse him. It's really the opposite of a profile in courage. Leadership really matters.

[applause]

David Remnick: What's stunning to me is this. A few weeks ago, we published excerpts from the prison diaries of Alexei Navalny. Alexei Navalny went back to Russia knowing he would be imprisoned and would likely die in a prison cell. We don't expect ordinary human beings, we don't expect of ourselves probably, to give our lives routinely for principle. What drives Mitch McConnell to such hypocrisy? What drives the owner of The Washington Post to refuse to allow his own newspaper to publish an endorsement? This is not like he would sit in a prison cell.

Liz Cheney: On the issue of The Washington Post, look, first of all, it's fear. Fear is Putin's weapon, too. Fear is how autocrats govern. While I think it's a disgrace that the Post apparently decided to pull the endorsement, I would say, number one, that isn't going to affect a single undecided voter anywhere in this country, but it absolutely proves the danger of Donald Trump. When you have Jeff Bezos apparently afraid to issue an endorsement for the only candidate in the race who's a stable, responsible adult because he fears Donald Trump, that tells you. That tells you why we have to work so hard to make sure that Donald Trump isn't elected.

David Remnick: What seems to me to raise the danger is to signal to the autocrat that his people are weak and his people, even the wealthiest among them, will bow down, and without a spine, you cannot stand up.

Liz Cheney: I canceled my subscription to The Washington Post. Just saying.

[applause]

[music]

David Remnick: Liz Cheney, former representative from Wyoming, will continue in a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.

[music]

David Remnick: I'm speaking today with Liz Cheney, who's been campaigning for Kamala Harris. She told me that she's reconsidered not just Donald Trump himself, but what she called the toxic environment of partisanship in Washington.

Is the lure of partisan politics that severe, though? You voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020, and it was really not until the insurrection on Capitol Hill that you broke him. I have that right?

Liz Cheney: Yes. I spoke out against him very clearly when he did and said things that I thought clearly had gone beyond and I think it's--

David Remnick: When you look back on it, were you making an accommodation because you overlapped on certain issues? In other words, how does this work?

Liz Cheney: I think it was a couple of things. It certainly is my biggest professional regret ever supporting him. You do get into a place-- we certainly saw it happen with Trump, which is, well, okay, what he's saying is crazy, but he doesn't really mean it. Which, of course, post-January 6th, post the 2020 election, there's no question that he means it. I think that the lesson that is so important for us now is to realize when he says things like, "I'm going to terminate the Constitution," or, "I believe that the enemy within is something that should be dealt with by the deployment of military force," he means those things.

David Remnick: Give me some insight into what it took for your father to make a similar decision and why George W. Bush has not.

Liz Cheney: Well, it was not a difficult decision at all for my dad. He has been absolutely, I would say, as concerned for maybe even longer than I have been about the danger that Donald Trump poses. I can't explain why George W. Bush hasn't spoken out, but I think it's time and I wish that he would.

[applause]

David Remnick: What is our complicity in the creation of Donald Trump? I was interested to listen to the conversation with Michael Beschloss. He had nothing good to say about Donald Trump, but he said, "There was 9/11. There were two misbegotten wars. There was NAFTA, which backfired in many ways for a lot of working-class people. There was an economic collapse in its aftermath and a growing and growing and growing inequality in this country." Some of these dynamics helped create Donald Trump, it seems to me, inarguably, or maybe you disagree.

Liz Cheney: I see it a little bit differently than that. I think that certainly there has been growing inequality. I know that when I look at Wyoming and the state, the people that I used to represent, there's a very real and I believe legitimate concern and fear that people have, that the government in Washington, that they can't influence it. Nobody in Washington's listening to them. If somebody issues a regulation or makes a determination about something that's going on on land that you're trying to graze cattle on, it'll destroy your livelihood immediately and you feel like you have no recourse, no voice. That is a very real thing. I think that Donald Trump absolutely tapped into that. There's no question.

Also, one more point on this. I think politicians have, for a long time, we've been toxic and we've launched attacks at each other. We got to a place in this country where you would hear political adversaries say that others were a threat to the Constitution or a threat to the future of the country. There's a tendency sometimes among voters to think, "Oh, we've heard politicians issue these warnings before. Just to write off these warnings as just more politics." I think that also means we all have a huge responsibility when this election's over that we get back to being able to engage on substance and have vigorous debates about substance in a way that is policy-focused and oriented.

[applause]

David Remnick: You talk about this coalition and a coalition that I guess stretches from AOC to you.

Liz Cheney: Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift.

David Remnick: Or Dick Cheney, even. Fair enough. There weren't too many people leaping out of Congress voluntarily to stand up. In fact, two or three.

Liz Cheney: When I talk about the dishonor, I am talking about elected Republicans. I think it is important to differentiate between elected Republicans and Republican voters writ large.

David Remnick: My question to you is this. Are these jobs so good?

Liz Cheney: No.

David Remnick: In other words, is it so cool being a congressman or a senator, that you will give up your soul to not have to go back to your home district and be a teacher again or some honorable profession? Is it so amazing?

Liz Cheney: It goes to the point, like term limits. I've never been a fan of term limits for members of Congress. I think there are constitutional issues. After I watched how many elected Republicans decided that their own reelection was more important than the oath they swore to the Constitution, I do think we need to think about things like term limits. There's an infinite, apparently, capacity for people to rationalize their behavior. One of the things that I saw after the 2020 election was members of Congress who would say, and Mike Johnson was at the top of this list, "We're just going to do this one more thing for Donald Trump. Just one more thing. We're just gonna file this brief that Johnson knew was unconstitutional, illegal. Just one more thing, because that'll show him how much we support him, and then he'll concede and we can all move on."

On the day of January 6th, before the attack, there were these sheets laid out in the Republican cloakroom. I walked in, and I could see my colleagues walking down the list, signing their names on these sheets of paper. I asked the staffer in the cloakroom what they were, and she said to me, "Well, those are the objections." People were saying, "Well, I'm going to object to the Arizona electors" and "Pennsylvania electors." I sat there and I watched one of my colleagues come by, very big Trump supporter. As he signed his name on the sheet, he said kind of out loud to anybody who could hear, he said, "The things we do for the orange Jesus," so they know. They know what they're doing.

David Remnick: You live long enough, you make mistakes. You live long enough, you change your mind. Sometimes it's not the courage of one's convictions, but it's the courage to change one's convictions, God knows it's happened to me. I've written things that I look back on and regret. In 2019, you said of the Democrats, "They've become the party of antisemitism. They've become the party of infanticide, the party of socialism." Do you feel that you've changed markedly on big issues like Iraq? How do you look back on that?

Liz Cheney: There's a lot in that question. First of all, let me touch on antisemitism. There were a couple of Democratic members who very clearly had tweeted some very clearly antisemitic tweets, and the Democrats in Congress refused to put legislation on the floor to condemn, I believe it was Representative Omar. My view then and my view now is it doesn't matter which party is saying things that are antisemitic. All of us at all times have to stand against antisemitism.

[applause]

Liz Cheney: I think part of that I would not change. I think that one of the real fallacies in this election is that somehow Donald Trump is going to be an ally of the Jewish people. Donald Trump dined at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier. JD Vance appeared on Tucker Carlson's show within days of Tucker Carlson platforming neo-Nazi propaganda. Donald Trump is ending his campaign, apparently with Tucker Carlson. The antisemitism that the Republican Party is now excusing and accommodating is despicable.

There are certainly things that I've said that I wouldn't have said or that I would have said in a different way. There's no question. I always think about when Speaker Pelosi appointed me to the Select Committee and one of her staffers handed her a piece of paper that said, "These are the top 10 worst things Liz Cheney has ever said about Nancy Pelosi." I was really glad that they stopped at 10 because I didn't know what else was out there.

David Remnick: What was the worst/

Liz Cheney: I don't remember but I'm sure it wasn't very--

David Remnick: Yes you do.

Liz Cheney: I don't.

[laughter]

Liz Cheney: It had something to do with her spine not reaching her brain, I think. Look, I think that it goes to the previous point that it can be very easy in politics, especially I think, in Congress, just to sort of go to your corner and say, "All right, any idea that comes from the other side, we're going to fight against and try to defeat." I wish that I hadn't done that as many times as I did. Certainly, I have said some things that I would say differently. I also know that there have been some pretty mean things said about me and more importantly, some pretty mean things said about my dad. I think that all of us, we ought to step back from this abyss of launching the worst kind of attack, because then, number one, we can't move forward together. Number two, when we have the threat that we have now, you want to be able to convey to people this really matters. This is really much beyond politics.

David Remnick: I'm guessing that a lot of people are thinking the following thing. "This has been really interesting, but I'm terrified about the election to come. I've been anxious now for-" What time is it? "-nine years and I don't understand my own country," or, "I don't understand half of the country." Right now, we're having a conversation that hinges on a couple of hundred thousand people, whether it's raining in Pennsylvania on a given day, that's the razor's edge we're describing. I think I'm getting this right, am I not, brothers and sisters? There is an incomprehension of the other half of the country. Surely it can't be that the other half of the country is bad or morally deficient or something.

Sometimes I read the explanations for this. Bret Stephens the other day in The New York Times on the op-ed page wrote if- and it took him until last week to say, or whatever it was, that he was finally going to pull the lever for Kamala Harris, fine- what he said was, "If the Republicans win, if Trump wins, who's at fault? The nasty liberals who are condescending and terrible to the rest of the country?" If Trump wins, who's at fault?

Liz Cheney: Trump's not going to win.

[applause]

David Remnick: Are you saying that for spiritual nourishment or you really believe it?

Liz Cheney: No. Both. [laughs] I really do believe it. There are a whole bunch of reasons that we are where we are. I tend to think one of the biggest ones is because elected Republicans failed to do their job, the voters. I've had people say to me, "If it's that big a deal, why isn't Mitch McConnell saying it's a bigger deal?" Why didn't the Senate convict him? If more Republicans had done the right thing, the country would not be looking into the edge of the abyss we are today.

[applause]

David Remnick: Liz Cheney, thank you so much, and thank you.

[music]

David Remnick: Liz Cheney represented Wyoming in Congress from 2016 to 2022 after serving for years in the State Department. She was vice chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6th attack.

[music]

 

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