By Weston Blasi
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney may have lost the Wyoming primary — but she’s not done with politics. Far from it.
Cheney, an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, was defeated by Trump-backed rival Harriet Hageman on Tuesday. Cheney serves as the vice chairwoman of the bipartisan Jan. 6 select committee, which has been investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and presenting evidence that Trump and his supporters instigated the insurrection .
Don’t miss: Liz Cheney shares audio of her concession call. Opponent Harriet Hageman claimed it hadn’t happened.
Also: Cheney loses to Trump-backed Hageman in Wyoming: Where the ‘Impeachment 10’ stand now
And Cheney told Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday that she is serious in her vow to fight to keep Trump from ever winning the White House again.
“I am absolutely going to continue this battle,” she said. “It’s the most important thing I’ve ever been involved in, and I think it’s certainly the most important thing, challenge, that our nation has faced in recent history, and maybe since the Civil War. And it’s one that we must win.”
Cheney was asked if she would consider a White House run in 2024 — a question she deflected at first.
“That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months, and I’m not going to make any announcements here this morning — but it is something that I am thinking about,” she said.
Cheney, a third-term Republican congresswoman, was behind in nearly every poll leading up to her primary against Hageman. In the weeks before the vote, Cheney called on her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to help sway Republican voters with a viral political ad that labeled Trump a “coward” and a “threat” to American democracy. She still ended up losing by a 37-percentage-point margin .
See also: Video of Dr. Oz complaining about grocery prices goes viral: ‘That’s $20 for crudités!’
Wyoming, a strongly Republican-leaning state for decades, voted in favor of Hageman, who has echoed Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” notwithstanding that, aside from the second Trump impeachment and then her central role in the Jan. 6 House select committee, Cheney had reliably been in the Trump corner.
A group of prominent conservatives released a 72-page report in July that aimed to publicly and definitively debunk Trump’s claims of election fraud in the 2020 general election — the group concluded Trump had “failed to produce substantive evidence.”
Cheney said that she intends to work within a bipartisan coalition to stop Trump’s future political efforts. “And I think that defeating him is going to require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents, and that’s what I intend to be a part of,” she said.
