Cheney's gambit
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.
Edited by Sam Thielman
If you watched the Jan. 6 committee hearings last night, you saw a clear, consistent narrative laid out in prime time: During the hours his mob was storming the Capitol, Donald Trump was unhinged, defiant, and, above all, alone.
Former Trump White House staffers Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger testified at length about how they resigned in disgust after the attack. Recordings of the Republican leaders of both chambers of Congress, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, denouncing Trump, were played. McCarthy was heard saying Trump should resign. Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone swore that everyone in the White House — himself, his fellow lawyers, Ivanka, Jared, chief of staff Mark Meadows, probably the kitchen staff — urged Trump to denounce the rioters. When Liz Cheney, the ranking Republican member of the committee, asked, “Who on the staff did not want people to leave the Capitol?” Cipollone responded, nearly chuckling, “I can’t think of anybody.” Asked to clarify whether nobody included the then-president, Cipollone responded with a performative, thirty-second-long no comment.
I’m sorry, but you’d have to be extremely gullible to buy all of that. Really? No one at the White House except Donald Trump himself wanted his coup to succeed? Not his kids? Not his chief of staff, who allegedly burned documents after a meeting about strategies for invalidating the election with the chair of the House Freedom Caucus? No one involved in setting up his inciting rally on the Ellipse that very morning? We’re supposed to believe that, after four years of standing by and deferring to Trump throughout every lawless, brutal action, every single one of the people with the most to lose from the certification of the vote uniformly broke ranks that afternoon.
Cheney seems to think she can make the American people — specifically those on the right — believe that. And while I’m skeptical that she can pull it off, if I’m being honest, I find myself half-hoping it works.
Let’s remember for a second who Liz Cheney is. The eldest daughter of former Vice President and Sith Lord Dick Cheney, she, like her father, is an unrepentant neoconservative. She was the