Cheney: ‘There is absolutely a cult of personality around Donald Trump’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, said in an excerpt of an interview released Friday that “there is absolutely a cult of personality around Donald Trump.”

“We have too many people now in the Republican Party who are not taking their responsibilities seriously, and who have pledged their allegiance and loyalty to Donald Trump. I mean it is fundamentally antithetical — it is contrary to everything conservatives believe to embrace a personality cult,” Cheney told CBS’s Robert Costa. “And yet that is what so many in my party are doing today.”

Costa asked Cheney if the Republican Party was a personality cult, to which she responded, “I think that large segments of it have certainly become that.”

“Yeah, I mean, I think there is absolutely a cult of personality around Donald Trump,” she elaborated later. 

Cheney, one of two Republicans to sit on the House select committee, voted to impeach Trump following the violent riot. The Wyoming Republican, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, soon encountered a changing political landscape after she was ousted from her spot as the House Republican Conference chair. 

She launched her reelection bid late last month and is fighting to retain her seat against Trump-backed challenger attorney Harriet Hageman. 

Cheney has also been unafraid to criticize House Republican leadership, including last month, when she argued that “the House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism” following a shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., where 11 of the 13 victims were Black. 

“Same thing Cheney always does, just trying to play a political game when she knows something’s not true,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) asserted following her comments.

The full interview is set to air on Sunday.