Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) joined both CNN’s “State of the Union” ands CBS’s “Face The Nation” for wide-ranging interviews this morning on the importance of standing with Israel and the need for the United States to lead the forces of freedom in the ongoing war against forces of tyranny and terrorism, House Republicans’ inability to govern, and the continued threat posed to the country by Donald Trump. Full transcripts for both of these interviews can be found below:
Cheney: Israel Must Take Whatever Action They Need To Take To Defend Themselves
JAKE TAPPER: Joining me now for her first media interview in more than a year, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She was the number three Republican in the House and, before that, was a high-ranking State Department official. Thank you so much for being here.
LIZ CHENEY: Thank you.
TAPPER: It’s good to have you. So, as you know, Gaza City is very densely populated, and Hamas embeds itself within the population. Do you think it’s wise for Israel to stage a ground incursion, strategically? And do you think Israel’s been doing enough to prevent the loss of innocent life? We know Hamas embeds itself within the population. That’s one of the things they do. They’re a terrorist organization. But is this smart for Israel?
CHENEY: Look, I think that, number one, people need to recognize that what’s happening in terms of the conditions in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas. The reason that people in Gaza are facing the situation they’re facing, Hamas has been in charge in Gaza since 2006 at least. So, Israel — we have moved so quickly beyond the focus on the devastation of the terrorist attack, the absolutely barbaric slaughter of men, women and children, the stories that we continue to see come out of babies tied up with wire and murdered brutally, of people tortured in front of their children. I mean, the fact that people have moved on from that is really wrong. And Israel must…
TAPPER: Just FYI, we have not, and we continue to tell those stories on CNN. Just…
CHENEY: No, and I think it’s very important. What we have seen, though, around the world is even, frankly, before Israel began any kind of a response in Gaza, we saw this massive expansion and explosion of demonstrations around the world, antisemitic, anti-Israel, here in the United States on our university campuses. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It needs to stop. Israel must take whatever action they need to take to defend themselves. And the United States should not be in the business of telling them to stop, to slow down. They have got to defend themselves. And that means they have got to defeat Hamas.
TAPPER: Sure, but let me ask you, just in terms of advising a country that is an ally — a lot of people are drawing parallels to 9/11, although, proportionally, this was worse. This is about — would be the same as killing 40,000 people in Israel, as opposed to 3,000 that happened here in 9/11. On 9/11, your father was vice president. You came to work at the State Department after 9/11. Take a listen to what President Biden said in Israel this week.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN (CLIP): But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.
TAPPER: Given the goal of not just defeating Hamas, but a long-term goal of Israel living in peace, of a two-state solution, if that’s even a serious proposition anymore, what lessons do you think we have learned as a country that we could tell Israel, that we could share with Israel?
CHENEY: Well, look, I think probably the biggest mistake that we made post-9/11 was President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan the way that he did. I think the biggest lesson that we have learned — and, frankly, after 9/11, the fact that the steps we took for over 20 years now have prevented another mass casualty terrorist attack at the hands of Islamic terrorists, is something that we all ought to be very clear about and we ought to remember. The lesson that we have learned and the lesson that we need to apply here is, first of all, these conflicts are connected. Iran absolutely is behind what’s happening with respect to Hamas, with respect to Hezbollah. Some of the Hamas terrorists, they found Iranian munitions, North Korean munitions in their kit. The Hamas leadership itself has talked about their ties and relationship with Russia. We have got an ally — we have got an adversaries arrayed against us who only understand strength, who only understand that they don’t — weakness to them, frankly, is provocative. And if they think that we’re weak, if they think that we’re going to lose our resolve, they will, in fact, be strengthened. So the lesson that we need to learn here is, Iran needs to recognize, if they do come in, then they will face very severe consequences from Israel, from us. But the forces of freedom are at war with the forces of tyranny and terrorism around the world, and America has got to lead. I thought that part of President Biden’s speech from the Oval Office was good. I think that those themes of the indispensable nature of America and America’s leadership in the battle for freedom globally, that’s exactly right, exactly what we need to be saying. The administration needs to make some fundamental changes with respect to their Iran policy. The — we saw just last week, for example, the sanctions preventing Iran from exporting missile technology lapsed. Those are gone now…And the administration didn’t take any steps to stop that. We need to do a better job. We need to actually enforce the sanctions with respect to Iran’s oil exports. We ought to put the Houthis back on the terrorist list. So there are a whole range of things we need to do. And, in my view, the lesson from the post-9/11 era is that American strength is what matters, what’s going to keep us safe. And Israeli strength is something that we ought to be supporting and advocating for.
TAPPER: The attack was on October 7, a Saturday. I think it was Wednesday that Donald Trump gave a speech in which he insulted Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said the attacks wouldn’t have happened if he had been president, said that Netanyahu let him down. He said it was — had something to do with the strike against Soleimani, but a lot of people interpreted it as because Netanyahu congratulated Biden after Biden won the presidency. He insulted the defense minister of Israel, called him a jerk. He praised Hezbollah as smart. What was your reaction to that? And did it surprise you that Trump could say all of that about the prime minister while they were still burying the dead after the October 7 terrorist attack, and it didn’t have any impact on Republican voters or what Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill said about Donald Trump?
CHENEY: They were appalling comments. And you’re absolutely right that there should have been a response. I think that every Republican member of Congress ought to be asked about those comments. Every Republican candidate for the presidency ought to be asked about those comments. The other thing to remember about Donald Trump is that he reportedly shared Israeli intelligence with the Russians very early in his term. He also, as we know now from the indictments that we have seen from Jack Smith, shared highly classified military documents apparently relating to military action potentially against Iran. He shared that with Mark Meadows’ ghostwriters and political consultants, it seems, according to the indictments. So, if you think about not only is he out there advocating for complimenting America’s adversaries and, in fact, terrorist organizations that slaughter innocents; he also seems to have shared very highly classified intelligence information, both ours and the Israelis, in fact, with adversaries. So I think it’s simply the latest example of why Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States.
TAPPER: Who do you think is providing better leadership on the international stage right now, Biden or Trump?
CHENEY: Oh, certainly Biden.
TAPPER: President Biden also pushed for more aid to Ukraine. I want you to take a listen to what a sitting Republican senator had to say about the package that Biden is pushing.
SEN. J.D. VANCE (VIDEO CLIP): Whatever your views, Sean, on Ukraine, it is a separate country and a separate problem. I think what the president did is completely disgraceful. If he wants to sell the American people on $60 billion more to Ukraine, he shouldn’t use dead Israeli children to do it. It was disgusting.
TAPPER: Your response?
CHENEY: Look, I mean, what J.D. Vance is saying is completely wrong, ignorant, uninformed. As I said before, America is facing four adversaries right now, and major adversaries, in China and Russia and North Korea and Iran. And what happens with respect to our willingness to defend Ukraine has a direct impact on all of those other challenges and conflicts we face. And the idea that we’re now in a situation where you have got this growing movement on the part of Republicans not to support American aid to Ukraine is dangerous. It’s wrong. Anybody who’s today saying they don’t support aid to Ukraine needs to be asked, and, frankly, I hope they will be asked in the candidate forum tomorrow night for speaker, why in the world would you be engaged in surrendering to America’s adversaries? Because that’s what that is. If you do not support aid to Ukraine, given the global atmosphere and the context in which we’re living, you are, in fact, helping America’s adversaries. You’re demonstrating weakness at precisely the moment when we need to be showing strength. So, it’s dangerous and ill-informed.
TAPPER: Congresswoman Cheney, stick around. We have some questions to ask about the candidates for speaker coming up. We will be right back after this quick break.
Cheney: The House GOP Chaos Is A Result Of Decisions Made By Kevin McCarthy After The 2020 Election
TAPPER: Back with me now is former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was once the third-ranking Republican in the House. I have to ask, what has it been like to watch this fiasco play out over the last few weeks?
CHENEY: I mean, it is — it’s hard to describe. I wish that it were surprising. What we have seen is a result of really the leadership decisions that Kevin McCarthy made all the way back after the 2020 election, and certainly after January 6, and looking the other way in the face of the kind of assault on our democracy that we have seen from Donald Trump and his allies in the House, including Jim Jordan, elevating those members, frankly, some of whom are white supremacists, some of whom are antisemitic, a number of whom were involved directly in the attempt to seize power and overturn the election. So, it’s not a surprise, when you see that those people have been empowered. But it’s also — it’s really dangerous.
TAPPER: McCarthy empowered them, right?
CHENEY: Exactly, in order to be able to obtain the votes he needed to become speaker. But I also have been watching the extent to which political violence and the threats of violence have now reared their head once again. Those have become part of our politics in a way that certainly they never should. I talked to one of my former colleagues who was in the meeting with Jordan and the holdouts a few days ago. And he told me that, when some of the members who were receiving these threats of violence raised it and asked Jordan about it, that another of our colleagues, Representative Davidson, also from Ohio, said, essentially: It’s not Jim Jordan’s fault. It’s your fault because you’re voting against Jim Jordan. Now, that kind of acceptance of violence is completely inappropriate and dangerous in our politics. So, I — we need people who are serious and who recognize and understand the dangers that we’re facing globally, as well as from Donald Trump and those who support him.
TAPPER: It used to be that that kind of what’s called stochastic terrorism, the idea of people demonizing their enemies, and not specifically, not specifically calling for violence against their enemies, but demonizing them in such a way, you know, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” and then people come and threaten them, that that was — that that was frowned upon, that was discouraged in politics. Do you trace it back to Donald Trump? Like, when did this become an acceptable part of Republican politics?
CHENEY: I think you certainly would have to trace it back, in its modern version, to Donald Trump. And we now know, frankly, because of the lie, we know that the lie about the election, we know that telling people that they have to use violence in order to take back their country, we know that that lie was very effective in sparking violence. And it hasn’t stopped. I mean, one of the — one of the issues that I — again, I hope will come up at the speakers forum tomorrow night is the question that Ken Buck keeps asking, is, do you understand, do you accept that Donald Trump lost the election in 2020? And do you understand and recognize the connection between continuing that lie and the political violence that we have seen unleashed across the country?
TAPPER: And a bunch of the candidates for speaker, Kevin Hern, Byron Donalds, Mike Johnson, Jack Bergman, all of them voted to object to the Electoral College results in Arizona and Pennsylvania and to disenfranchise millions of Americans based on those lies. Is that disqualifying?
CHENEY: Certainly. I think there’s no question. And I think it tells you, though — over 140 members of the House Republican Conference voted to object, and voted to object after the violence. So…
TAPPER: After people were dead, after bodies were lying dead in the Capitol.
CHENEY: Right, after the — and after the mob that Donald Trump provoked had invaded. So, it certainly should be a disqualification. And I think that, if it isn’t a disqualification, it will send a very clear message, yet one more clear message, to voters, as they think about who they’re going to vote for in 2024, to what extent can you trust this group of Republicans to defend the Constitution if they’re unwilling to even acknowledge the rulings of the courts, as well as the constitutional process that unfolded and the complete lack of evidence, as well as all of the testimony that we put on in our hearings in the January 6 Committee? From the leadership of Donald Trump’s own campaign, from the leaders of his White House Counsel’s Office, the Department of Justice making clear he did not win the election, and he knew he didn’t win the election.
TAPPER: I mean, I guess Congressman Tom Emmer, who is the majority whip, I believe, he’s — he did not vote that way. But I feel like it’s almost disqualifying among House Republicans to be reality-based.
CHENEY: Well, that’s been my personal experience…
TAPPER: Yes.
CHENEY: And I don’t want to — I hesitate to endorse anybody, because I think that won’t be helpful for them. But I do think people need to…
TAPPER: But listen to what you’re saying. That’s crazy. You are super conservative. You are more conservative than almost any of the House Republican leadership. You’re more conservative than the woman who replaced you, Elise Stefanik. You’re just not nuts. You’re just not anti-democracy.
CHENEY: Right. Well, look, and I think that really is a testament about where we are as a country today. And we have to have a party that gets back to advocating those conservative policies, gets back to embracing the Constitution. That is not what the Republican Party is doing today.
TAPPER: It’s just — I mean, do you ever just, like, stop and think about the world that we’re in right now, where a majority of Republican voters and a majority of House Republicans just think the moon is made of green cheese?
CHENEY: No, I do, certainly. And I have spent the last almost a year now working on a book — it’s going to be out at the beginning of December — that really looks at these issues and tells the story of the evolution inside the Republican Conference, for example, as we were walking through this whole period of, how do people keep accepting behavior that they never would have accepted before? And it’s a cautionary tale, because it happened very easily that people said, we’re going to go with Trump, instead of the Constitution.
TAPPER: What do you think it says about Jim Jordan and what do you think it says about House Republicans that, in his last public ballot, 25 House Republicans voted against him, but then, in the secret ballot a few minutes later, more than 100 Republicans voted against him, a majority?
CHENEY: Right. Look, well, first of all, I’m very glad that they decided — I think that, if it took a secret ballot to send the very clear message that Jim Jordan can’t be the speaker of the House, I’m glad they did that. But I do think that, if we’re going to be able to get back to a place in this country where we actually have people who are advocating for the Constitution in both parties, then we’re going to need people to have some more courage than my former colleagues are showing right now and be willing to say, no, I won’t accept this, I won’t stand for it, when you have to stand up and say so and put your name next to that vote. Because this notion of the secret ballot being the only time that you can go against Donald Trump helps to strengthen Donald Trump.
Cheney: Donald Trump Is The Single Most Dangerous Threat We Face As A Country
TAPPER: So, former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro just struck plea deals this week in Fulton County. Both have agreed to testify in future trials. Based on your investigations as vice chair of the Select Committee investigating January 6, do you think they have information that could have bigger consequences for people up the food chain, including Donald Trump?
CHENEY: Certainly. I think there’s no question. And I think that, in both cases — I mean, we know, for example, that Sidney Powell was in key meetings at the White House, including one where Donald Trump may well have signed — invoking the Insurrection Act, with Mike Flynn in the room, who advocated seizing voting machines. We know that Kenneth Chesebro was directly involved in the fake electors scheme, where fraudulent electors…
TAPPER: It was his scheme, I think.
CHENEY: Well, he certainly helped to put it in place, but, at the end of the day, Donald Trump oversaw everything.
TAPPER: Right.
CHENEY: And that scheme of presenting false electors to the United States Congress in order to seize power, to overturn an election, to try to convince Mike Pence to take unlawful and unconstitutional action absolutely directly touches Donald Trump.
TAPPER: A New York state judge fined Donald Trump $5,000 for violating his gag order in the civil fraud trial, even raising the prospect of possibly imprisoning him. To be clear, $5,000 is pocket change for Donald Trump. But this is about Donald Trump smearing one of his clerks, falsely accusing the clerk of having an affair with Chuck Schumer. There’s literally no evidence of this. You know what it’s like to be on the end of a Donald Trump smear. And now some House Republicans, other than you and Kinzinger, know what it’s like to get death threats. Do there need to be more serious consequences for Donald Trump when it comes to this sort of thing?
CHENEY: I think what we have seen over the course of the last almost three years now since January 6 has been, almost without exception, almost without exception, the judiciary has just been — just stalwart in terms of recognizing and understanding the threat to the republic that’s posed by Donald Trump’s past behavior, by what he did leading up to January 6, and, frankly, what he’s continued to do. And so I think that it’s really important that people recognize the efforts that he’s putting in to try to tear down every institution of our democracy. And I think that we have — we all need to be very clear about the extent to which the judges and the justices in this country, and, again, as I said, almost without exception, whether they have been appointed by Democratic presidents or Republican presidents, have a very clear understanding of the danger here and a very clear understanding and dedication to the rule of law. And, as a nation, we all ought to be very grateful for that. And we ought to reject the kind of attacks that we’re seeing, obviously, launched by Donald Trump, but also the kind of lies coming out of Jim Jordan and some other House Republicans, the notion that the entire judiciary system or the FBI is weaponized against us. And I would urge that people think about, as we look at the threats globally, the notion that we have got Republicans saying, we’re going to defund the FBI, we’re going to defund the Department of Justice, Jim Jordan wants to stop a number of the programs that have kept us safe since 9/11, that is very dangerous. And people like that don’t understand the threat we face.
TAPPER: And, as you know, it’s not just House Republicans. It’s not just Donald Trump. It’s FOX. It’s an entire right-wing ecosystem that is amplifying these lies. And Donald Trump is likely to be the next Republican presidential nominee, and he has a decent shot of being elected the next president. I mean, it could happen. What would a second Donald Trump term look like?
CHENEY: Well, he cannot be the next president, because, if he is, all of the things that he attempted to do, but was stopped from doing by responsible people around him at the Department of Justice, at the White House Counsel’s Office, all of those things, he will do. There will be no guardrails. And everyone has been left warned. After January 6, after our investigation, after all of the evidence that we laid out about all of the steps in his multipart plan to overturn the election, there can be no question that he will unravel the institutions of our democracy. So we are facing a moment in American politics where we have to set aside partisanship, and we have to make sure that people who believe in the Constitution are willing to come together to prevent him from ever again setting foot anywhere near the Oval Office.
TAPPER: But, if it came down to it, even though you disagree with Joe Biden on almost every issue under the sun, other than maybe Ukraine and Israel, would you vote for him over Donald Trump?
CHENEY: We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to see how things unfold. I think Donald Trump is the single most dangerous threat we face. I would imagine that there will be a number of other candidates in the race that I think…
TAPPER: Would you be one of them?
CHENEY: I will tell you what I’m — what I’m definitely going to do. I’m going to spend the next year, between now and the election, certainly helping to elect serious people, helping to elect sane people to Congress.
TAPPER: Of both parties?
CHENEY: Yes, because I think that we could well find ourselves in a situation, given what we know the Trump folks are doing, in terms of attempting to question the results of the election — we don’t want a situation where the election is thrown into the House of Representatives and Donald Trump has any possibility at all of prevailing under those circumstances. So, we have got to elect people who believe in the Constitution and who take their responsibility seriously to Congress. So, I’m going to be spending a lot of time doing that, in addition to other things.
TAPPER: But you’re not ruling out a presidential run?
CHENEY: No, I’m not.
TAPPER: OK. And we will see you when your book comes out.
CHENEY: Thank you. I look forward to it.
TAPPER: Congresswoman Liz Cheney, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.
CHENEY: Thank you.
Cheney: We Must Unite Across Party In Defense Of Israel And In The Importance Of Destroying Hamas
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re now joined by former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney. Good morning, and good to have you here in person.
LIZ CHENEY: Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. Good to be here.
BRENNAN: Well, we’ve been talking about what’s happening in the Middle East right now. I know you watch the region closely. President Biden counseled Netanyahu during his trip to Israel last week and repeated a certain phrase I want to play for you here in his Oval Office address.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN (VIDEO CLIP): “I caution this while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11 We were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
BRENNAN: And that was a nod to 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq, potentially an overreach. Do you agree with that warning President Biden is issuing there, that there is the risk here of Israel taking actions that could backfire on their own security?
CHENEY: I think that our support and defense of Israel needs to be unwavering. I think that for the most part, that’s what President Biden has demonstrated. I thought that most of the themes that he laid out in his Oval Office address were exactly right about the importance of American leadership, the importance of understanding this is a battle between the forces of freedom and the forces of tyranny and terrorism. With respect to his comments about 9/11 and post-9/11, I would say the fact that we had not a single additional terrorist attack, mass casualty terrorist attack, in over 20 years now, demonstrates that the steps that we took were, in fact effective. And I would say the biggest mistake, frankly, post 9/11 was the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan that President Trump started, President Biden completed. So I think we need to set that we need to set set our differences about those issues aside, we certainly do have them. But with respect to what’s happening in the world today, I think it’s crucially important for the world to see that the United States, we are united across party lines in the defense of Israel and in the importance of the destroying Hamas, and also a very strong warning that the President has issued to Iran, and that, frankly, the Biden administration policy needs to be changed to make it consistent with the kind of warning that we’ve seen.
BRENNAN: But in terms of that comment about reacting from a place of rage and unintended consequences, Secretary Blinken said the only way to defeat an ideology is by offering a better alternative. What is the better alternative for conflict that has been going on for this many decades?
CHENEY: There is no notion in which this is a battle of ideologies when you look at what Hamas did. And I think that the world has moved on far too quickly from what Hamas did. Hamas slaughtered innocents, they invaded Israel, and they slaughtered women and children and tortured people and raped people. And the fact that the world has moved on from that now, that is an ideology, if it even is one, of evil. And so, the way to battle that is making sure that you destroy Hamas, making sure that we sent a very clear message to Iran, that Iran will face severe consequences if it tries to get involved here. We also though need to recognize the the rising antisemitism and the expressions of antisemitism that we have seen across our country and across the world, since October 7, must be absolutely rejected. And the world must stand against that. So this is not a you know, moral equivalence. This is not a peace process question. This was out and out slaughter. And we absolutely stand against that.
BRENNAN: And CBS continues to tell those stories. So just to be clear, the journalists have not moved on. When will you make a decision about whether you want to run for president the United States?
CHENEY: Well, what I am doing right now, what I will continue to do is very much focus on making sure that we get people elected at all levels, who are serious. People who believe in the Constitution. I think we’re at a moment in this nation where we certainly have seen we face significant threats internationally. We’ve got Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, arrayed against us. This is a threat atmosphere that we have not seen, certainly since the end of World War Two…
BRENNAN: Bob Gates said ever.
CHENEY: Right. Yes
BRENNAN: But it also said there’s no presidential alternative in terms of affirmative vision for America’s role in the world. Have you heard any candidates for president offer that vision?
CHENEY: I think that certainly you have seen some. I think that it needs to be a much louder. We need a much louder voices within both parties within my own party. I don’t even know I should call it my own party within the Republican Party right now. The extent to which you’re seeing people suggest that we should abandon Ukraine, which essentially is surrendering in this battle between freedom and tyranny. And that would be very dangerous for our security.
BRENNAN: As you know, this massive national security package can’t pass until there’s a speaker of the house. Last month you said Congressman Patrick McHenry would make a great speaker of the house or it was earlier in October in a speech. He says he’s not looking for a job. What is the vision for it? Is there anyone who can lead it? Is that, is he an alternative?
CHENEY: Look, I think what you’re seeing right now and among the Republicans in the House is a direct result of the decisions that Kevin McCarthy made to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace the most radical and extreme members of our party, that elevate them. So it’s not a surprise that we are where we are, but it’s a disgrace, and it’s an embarrassment. And there certainly are serious people among the Republicans. I hope that that one of them, particularly, I think it’s important somebody not be an election denier. And I also think everybody should be asked tomorrow night at the candidate forum about this issue of Ukraine assistance, and they should be asked from the perspective of, we face a global challenge and existential threat. And how in the world could anybody defend at this moment, surrendering to one of our adversaries by walking away from Ukraine?
BRENNAN: What do you think is driving the domestic threats against lawmakers within the Republican Party and also, among some Democrats?
CHENEY: The domestic threats are absolutely being driven by Donald Trump and, unfortunately, some of his supporters who, in fact have encouraged and taken steps that have resulted in, as we saw on January 6, political violence. When you have a member of Congress reportedly, like Warren Davidson from Ohio, who, in the meeting with Jim Jordan last week, when some of the holdouts raised with Jordan, the fact that they were getting death threats. One of them told me that in response, Congressman Davidson said, Well, that’s not Jim Jordan’s fault. That’s your fault for voting against him. That is the kind of encouragement and acceptance of violence that is absolutely has no place in this party, should have no place in our country.
BRENNAN: It’s intimidation.
CHENEY: It is.
BRENNAN: Congresswoman, it’s great to have you here.
CHENEY: Great to be here. Thank you, Margaret.