Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) rebuked her former fellow GOP leader, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), on Sunday for upholding ex-President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn’t).
Cheney, who was kicked out of her leadership role as House Republican conference chair for pushing back against Trump’s lie, retweeted a clip of Scalise’s interview on Fox News Sunday, during which the number two Republican leader refused to acknowledge that the election was legitimate.
Cheney wrote in her retweet that “million of Americans have been sold a fraud that the election was stolen” and therefore “Republicans have a duty to tell the American people that this is not true.”
“Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic,” she wrote.
During his appearance on Fox News, Scalise persistently dodged when Fox host Chris Wallace tried asking him several times if he believed the election was stolen.
Instead, the GOP leader kept claiming without evidence that states “didn’t follow their legislatively set rules.”
Scalise was one of the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory on Jan. 6, even after a mob of Trump’s supporters had attacked the Capitol with the ex-president’s encouragement earlier that day.
Cheney has been in tension with House Republican leaders for months, particularly after she was removed from her leadership spot and replaced by Trump loyalist Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
Since then, Cheney has joined the Democrat-led House select committee on investigating the Capitol insurrection. She and outspoken Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) are the only two GOP lawmakers on the committee.
