Former House Republican conference chair Rep. Liz Cheney told Politico she wouldn’t vote for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for speaker next year if the GOP won back the House majority.
Why it matters: Cheney has signaled she will continue to be a voice of opposition against Donald Trump and factions of her own party, including those like McCarthy who she believes have enabled the former president and his lies.
- Cheney was ousted from leadership last week for voting to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and for continuing to criticizing his election lies in the months following.
- “I think that we've got to have leaders who lead based on principle, and that's not what we've seen from him,” Cheney said of McCarthy in an interview out Tuesday.
Between the lines: Cheney's wordshighlight the broken relationship between she and McCarthy, as the pair have ended up on either side of a rift about whether Trump should be a leading voice in the party during his post-presidency.
- Cheney told NBC's "Today" after her ouster last week that McCarthy's visit to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump in the weeks following Jan. 6 was "really stunning."
- Axios previously reported that Cheney plans to run for re-election while painting her rift with her own party as more than just a squabble about her leadership position — but instead about truth and the soul of the GOP.
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