Hours after suffering a stunning defeat in the Wyoming GOP primary, Rep. Liz Cheney acknowledged her political aspirations are far from over.
Cheney, who became rabidly anti-Trump during her time in office and was one of two Republicans on the January 6 Committee, lost in a landslide on Tuesday to political newcomer Harriet Hageman, who was backed by the former president.
Asked by "TODAY" show's Savannah Guthrie what she plans to do now, Cheney said she'll do "whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office."
"We've got to get this party back to a place where we're embracing the values and the principles on which it was founded," she said.
Guthrie pressed whether that meant she was considering a run for president.
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"It is something that I am thinking about," she said, "and I'll make a decision in the coming months."
NOW - Liz Cheney says she is thinking about running for president following her resounding primary defeat.pic.twitter.com/0lNeGAsEYo
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 17, 2022
While Cheney's election result shows she fell far away from the views of the Wyomingites she claimed to represent, national polling among U.S. adults doesn't suggest she's all that popular either.
According to Statista, only 14 percent of respondents had a very favorable view of the congresswoman.
But winning may not be the point, as The Washington Post highlighted recently.
Cheney and her crowd want a candidate who would serve merely as a political kamikaze, blowing up his or her candidacy but also taking down Trump.
“You need that. I think it’s got to be somebody that’s willing to take the boos, take the yells,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), the only other Republican on the Jan. 6 committee, said in a recent interview. “Somebody [who] can stand on the stage and just tell people the truth, I think that would have a huge impact.”
Mehlhorn, the adviser to anti-Trump donors, said that if Cheney were to approach them “and say, you know, with an extra 10 million, I can make sure that Republican voters are reminded of how bad Trump is in a way that might allow someone else to emerge from the primary or might weaken him for the general, but I need another $10 or $20 million — look, we would take that seriously.” (WaPo)
In the meantime, what we do know is that Cheney will launch an organization in the near future aimed at educating Americans about "the ongoing threat to our Republic, and to mobilize a unified effort to oppose any Donald Trump campaign for president," according to Cheney spokesperson Jeremy Adler.
