Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney refused to call herself a Republican, opting instead to label herself “a conservative” and rejected the idea that she was a member of “Donald Trump’s Republican Party.”
Cheney, the former chair of the House GOP Conference and lifelong member of the Republican Party, has been an outspoken critic of Trump and renounced him to endorse Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in September.
Cheney appeared on NBC News’ Meet The Press on Sunday with host Kristen Welker, who pressed her on her status now that she had publicly backed the Democratic nominee.
Welker asked: “Congresswoman, do you still consider yourself to be a Republican, and can you take us through the conversation you had with your father when he decided to vote for Kamala Harris?”
“I’m a conservative,” Cheney replied.
“A Republican?” the host pressed.
The ex-congresswoman repeated her answer: “I am a conservative. I do not consider myself to be a member of Donald Trump’s Republican party.”
Pivoting to Welker’s second question about her father, Dick Cheney’s decision to also vote Democrat this election, despite having served under Republican President George W. Bush’s as vice president, Cheney said: “You know, my father and I speak every day, and he has really, you know, from the very beginning of this process understood as much as I do, even more at the beginning probably, the threat that Donald Trump poses, and so, you know, this was not any kind of a surprise.”
She continued: “And look, I think the fact that it’s not just him, but the numbers of, you know, senior officials, national security advisers, secretaries of defense that you have seen who served in the trump administration who say this man is unfit, and Republicans can try all they want to get people to ignore that, to look away from that, but I think that’s a very important thing for the voters to recognize.”
Watch above on NBC News.
