Trump’s Republican critics turn to party princess Liz Cheney

Rising congresswoman Liz Cheney has emerged as one of the President’s most determined critics

Liz Cheney outside the US Capitol in Washington last week. Picture: Getty Images

Aa an anxious and erratic Donald Trump battles to get his re-election campaign back on track he has faced little opposition from Republicans for his most controversial excesses.

But a rising-star congresswoman with a famous surname has emerged as one of the President’s most determined critics. Liz Cheney, 53, represents Wyoming in the House of Representatives, as did her father, Dick Cheney, 79.

Former US vice-president Dick Cheney. Picture: AFP

Mr Cheney was at the apex of Republican politics for decades, as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, George HW. Bush’s defence secretary and George W. Bush’s vice-president. Ms Cheney’s ambitions are no less grand. Having entered US congress only in 2017, she is already chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, making her No 3 in the party’s House leadership team.

Yet Ms Cheney’s fealty is less prominent than those of her colleagues. When Mr Trump spent last week insinuating that Joe Scarborough, a television host he loathes, had murdered a staff member when he was a congressman, Ms Cheney intervened. “The President should stop tweeting about it,” she said. “He’s the commander-in-chief of this nation, and it’s causing great pain to the family of the young woman who died.”

Moments earlier, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House and Ms Cheney’s superior, had awkwardly eschewed the subject. “I did not serve with Scarborough,” he said. “I don’t know anything about the case.”

The only other prominent Republican to criticise Mr Trump over the affair was Mitt Romney, the senator from Utah and the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. But Mr Romney’s vote to convict Mr Trump in his impeachment trial has placed him far outside the party’s mainstream, whereas Ms Cheney remains a high-flyer.

It was the third time last month that Ms Cheney chided Mr Trump. When he insisted that the President had total power to order states to reopen their economies, she quoted on Twitter the specific clause of the US constitution that proved him wrong. And amid signs that the White House was losing faith in Anthony Fauci, its top virus doctor, early last month, she called him “one of the finest public servants we have ever had”, adding: “All Americans should be thanking him. Every day.”

Criticising Mr Trump, however gently, is a bold move when representing a state where he won 67 per cent of the vote in 2016. But in Wyoming, the least populous state in the US, “the Cheneys are royalty”, said Nick Reynolds, a reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune, the state’s largest newspaper.

“When your population represents a fraction of a per cent of the US population you need to punch above your weight to have your interests heard,” Mr Reynolds said.

Ms Cheney’s first foray into politics showed her ruthlessness. In an ill-fated attempt to oust a Republican incumbent in 2014, she set herself at odds with her sister, who was married to a woman, by saying she was against gay marriage.

The Times

Doug Lamborn, left, and Liz Cheney arrive for a classified House Armed Services Committee briefing in Washington. Picture: Getty Images