Liz Cheney, the onetime high-ranking Republican from Wyoming who torpedoed her own political career by breaking with former President Donald J. Trump, yesterday told students at a Duke University event that she would be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Via the Washington Post:
“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this,” Cheney said at an event hosted by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy in North Carolina. “And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
Cheney, who was once the No. 3 Republican in the House, voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, saying at the time that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.” Republicans subsequently ousted her from her role as chair of the House Republican Conference in May 2021 because she continued to challenge Trump over his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, was appointed in 2021 to the House Select Committee investing the Jan. 6 attack, where she served as vice chair. In August 2022, she was ousted in a primary by a Trump-endorsed Republican challenger, losing the seat by a wide margin.
And she went out of her way to caution student not to cast write-in candidates:
Trump has been critical of Cheney for years. In July, he shared another user’s post on his social media platform, Truth Social, claiming that Cheney was guilty of treason. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS,” the post read.
In her remarks at Duke on Wednesday, Cheney emphasized that she does not believe voters have the “luxury” of supporting write-in candidates to stop Trump.
