CASPER, Wyo. — Rep. Liz Cheney admitted she was “thinking about” a run for president in an interview Wednesday morning with NBC News.
“That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months, and I’m not going to make any announcements here this morning — but it is something that I am thinking about,” she said after first deflecting the question.
Cheney talked to NBC News the morning after her expected loss to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman.
@todayshow “I’ll make a decision in the coming months.” — In an exclusive interview, Rep. #LizCheney (R-Wyo.), one of former President #DonaldTrump‘s fiercest GOP critics in Congress, tells #SavannahGuthrie ♬ original sound – TODAY Show
Cheney also hinted that Democrats should remain in control of Congress so long as election deniers continue to lead the GOP.
“The election deniers right now are Republicans, and I think that it shouldn’t matter what party you are — nobody should be voting for those people supporting them or backing them,” she said.
NBC News said that overnight, Cheney formed a new leadership political action committee called “The Great Task,” which filed to transfer the remaining funds from her campaign into the new PAC.
Cheney’s NBC interview was the first she has given after Tuesday night’s Wyoming primary elections.
The primary results — and the over-35-point margin of her defeat — were a powerful reminder of the GOP’s rapid shift to the right. A party once dominated by national security–oriented, business-friendly conservatives like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, now belongs to Trump, animated by his populist appeal and, above all, his denial of defeat in the 2020 election.
Such lies, which have been roundly rejected by federal and state election officials as well as Trump’s own attorney general and judges he appointed, transformed Cheney from an occasional critic of the former president to the clearest voice inside the GOP warning that he represents a threat to democratic norms. She’s the top Republican on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, an attack she referenced in nodding to her political future.
“I have said since Jan. 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office — and I mean it,” she said during her concession speech on Tuesday.
The full interview can be seen here.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
