Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told "Axios on HBO" that she won't support Democrats in their fight against the GOP's push for more restrictive voting laws — a sign that she'll be no hero to the resistance.
Why it matters: Ten days after losing her House Republican post, Cheney is trying to put former President Trump's Big Lie about the election in a silo. She doesn't accept the larger context: Republicans spent years fertilizing the soil for voters to believe that voter fraud is rampant.
Speaking to "Axios on HBO" on Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Cheney disputed any linkage between Trump’s false claims about 2020 and the current flurry of GOP efforts at the state level to pass new restrictions.
- "I will never understand the resistance, for example, to voter ID," she said. "There's a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede."
But she said Trump supporters' refusal to accept President Biden's victory "is really dangerous."
- "I think about 2000," she said. "I think about sitting on the inaugural platform in January of 2001 watching Al Gore. ... I'm sure he didn't think he had lost. We had fought this politically very, very intense battle. And he conceded. He did the right thing for this nation."
- "And that is one of the big differences between that and what we're dealing with now and the danger of Donald Trump today."