Liz Cheney’s prophetic warning to her fellow Republicans

Of the millions of words uttered about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — or insurrection, if you prefer — none have been so eloquent as those spoken by Liz Cheney, who at the time was the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming.

Cheney was the vice chair of the House select committee that was investigating the events of that day. At the opening of a hearing, she issued what amounted to a warning to her fellow Republicans: “I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” 

For that, she was called a traitor. She lost her seat to a woman who wholeheartedly supported Trump (and whom Trump in return wholeheartedly supported). To say Wyoming is Trump country is an understatement: Cheney got only about 29 percent of the GOP primary vote in 2022.

And even now, after numerous run-ins with the law, the man she warned Republicans about is leading his GOP rivals for the nomination. It isn’t even close.

Except for Chris Christie and one or two others, no one wants to say out loud that Trump is unfit for office, even though I suspect more than a few know it. Instead, they go after him wearing kid gloves — fearing if they hit him too hard they may incur the wrath of his most passionate supporters. It’s a lot easier to wish he’d just go away.

From the moment Trump came down that escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, the GOP establishment figured there was no way he could win. They saw him as a TV reality show guy with a massive ego. To political pros, Trump was a joke.

But when it became clear that the joke was on them, a lot of Republicans jumped on the Trump crazy train hoping the office would somehow change him. When it didn’t, they stayed with him anyway … despite, well, despite everything — the lies, the name-calling, the tweets at all hours of the day and night, the nonstop, never-ending drama.

But then came Jan. 6, 2021 — the day he tried to turn the Constitution on its head and stay in office even after he lost to Joe Biden. That should have changed everything.

Loyalty goes only so far, after all. But nothing Trump did that day led GOP leaders — or conservative TV media allies, or GOP voters — to disown him. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that 75 percent of Republican voters agreed “he was just exercising his right to contest the election” while only 19 percent thought “he went so far that he threatened American democracy.” 

Anything is possible, of course, and there’s still a long way to go, but at the moment the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination is none other than Trump — the man who allegedly encouraged the Jan. 6 mayhem to stay in office after losing. And if Biden’s age and mental acuity are on the ballot, Trump may very well be president again.

Republicans likely hope that, win or lose in 2024, Trump won’t be hanging around the party’s neck much longer. If he loses, they figure, that’ll be the end of him. If he wins, they’ll only have to put up with his chaos for four more years.

But Trump is incapable of leaving the limelight. He’s addicted to being the center of attraction. And even if he winds up behind bars, he will figure out a way to send social media messages out every 10 minutes about how the system was rigged, about how he was the victim of a political prosecution. On that, let’s acknowledge, he just might be on to something,

Speaking of “behind bars,” a recent New Hampshire poll tells us that 57 percent of GOP primary voters in that state would back Trump even if he was “serving time in prison during the 2024 general election.” You can’t make this stuff up.

Democrats, in case you were wondering, aren’t any better when it comes to looking the other way. Whatever Biden’s role may or may not be in his son’s business dealings, it’s obvious that Hunter’s real business was selling influence, or at least the “illusion of access” — peddling his family name for lots and lots of money. Yet I can’t think of even one prominent Democrat who has risen to condemn Hunter’s smarmy operation. Truth, for both Democrats and Republicans, is too often an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs.

Which brings me back to Cheney’s warning. “I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” 

That may not be something GOP politicians or conservative cable news talking heads or Republican voters want to think about. But I suspect more than a few of them have at least an inkling, an uncomfortable feeling, that she may have been on to something. Whether they care or not is another matter altogether.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.