“There will come a
day when president Trump is gone. But your dishonour will remain,” said Liz
Cheney, Vice-Chair of the House of Representatives select committee
investigating the January 6 Capitol riots after the riots. Cheney, 55, daughter of former United
States Vice President Dick Cheney has emerged as a rare Republican voice of
reason at a time when Abraham Lincoln’s party has been taken over by far-right forces
who believe in conspiracy theories and Donald Trump. While at risk of being
side-lined, Liz Cheney has stood up and helped Americans understand what
happened on January 6, 2021.

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The House select
committee has held two public hearings so far, first on June 9 and another on June
13. Liz Cheney has led the two hearings from the front. During the first
hearing, Cheney heaped fact upon fact to show how Donald Trump and his allies
tried to fool the American people into believing the 2020 election was stolen. A
loyal Republican, she could have attempted to colour the Trump influence as a
fringe phenomenon. But she did not. She has been upfront in articulating that
Trumpism is at the front-and-centre of the Republican party.

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During the first
hearing, Cheney said, “…on January 6th, after he spent hours
watching a violent mob besiege, attack, and invade our Capitol, Donald Trump
tweeted, but he did not condemn the attack. Instead, he justified it. These are
the things and events that happen, he said when a sacred landslide victory is
so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have
been badly and unfairly treated for so long.”

While making her
case in course of the first public hearing, Liz Cheney detailed how Trump spurred
people on to violence and did not act even when his advisors insisted that he
do. “The president understood, even before the election, that many more Biden
voters had voted by mail in ballots in several states would not begin until
late in the day and would not be complete for multiple days,” Cheney said.

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Dick Cheney’s
daughter, spearheading the probe on January 6 riots, has spent her life espousing
conservative opinions. She has always maintained a hawkish stance on foreign
policy and has been vociferously pro-business. A conservative’s conservative,
Cheney’s break with mainstream Republicanism happened as the mainstream of the
Republican party was transformed as Trumpism became the GOP’s mainstay.

Through her public
admonishment of the influence of Trumpism in American polity, Liz Cheney has
defined herself as one of the most visible members of the Republican middle. Many
in the US media community believe Cheney is preparing for a 2024 presidential
run. In May 2021, she said she intends to be “the leader, one of the leaders,
in a fight to restore our party.” Cheney’s positioning on Trump makes her one
of the most viable Republican leaders in the post-Trump era.

Also Read | Capitol riots hearing: What Republicans have said, then and now

Many of her recent
political postures have been with regard to her rejection of the Trump sway in
Republican markers. A firm supporter of the globalised system of finance and
America’s position in it, Cheney has been a critic of Trump’s America First
policy. She had opposed proposals to withdraw from Afghanistan and slammed what
she called the “Putin wing” of the Republican Party.

Prior to her
leading the Jan 6 select committee probe, Liz Cheney made headlines last decade
for openly taking a position against same-sex marriage. This led to a public
fallout with her sister who wrote in a Facebook post that one should think all
families should be treated equally. “Liz’s position is to treat my family as second-class
citizens,” said Mary Cheney, Liz Cheney’s younger sister, who is married to a
woman – Heather Poe.

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 “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled
the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. You will also hear about plots to
commit seditious conspiracy on January 6, a crime defined in our laws as
conspiring to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force the government of the
United States or to oppose by force the authority thereof,” said Cheney, in
course of the first public hearing, the same Cheney who had once refused to
denounce adherents of Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories.