Although Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., lost her primary Tuesday, she said her work has just begun.
Cheney — who was targeted by former President Donald Trump for her role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol — lost handily to Trump’s endorsed candidate Harriet Hageman. Cheney used her concession speech to warn supporters about the threat she said the U.S. still faces from election deniers running for office.
“If we do not condemn the conspiracies and the lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct and it will become a feature of all elections,” Cheney said during her remarks in Jackson, Wyo. “America will never be the same.”
Cheney mentioned Trump-backed candidates for governor and secretary of state who could deny the results of future elections and refuse to certify votes, and said it would “corrupt our future.”
“This is not a game,” she said. “Every one of us must be committed to the eternal defense to this miraculous experiment called America.”
Cheney easily won her primary two years ago, and she believes she could have won again if she went along with Trump.
“That was a path I could not and would not take,” she said. “No House seat, no office in this land is more important that the principles that we are all sworn to protect.”
Cheney criticized Trump for voicing conspiracy theories he knows will provoke violence and threats of violence and said it’s “entirely foreseeable that the violence will escalate further.”
“Our great nation must not be ruled by a mob provoked over social media,” she said.
Cheney made no mention of what she plans to do next, but she said she intends to keep Trump out of the White House.
“We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face and about what is required to defeat it,” she said. “I have said since Jan. 6 to do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is nowhere near the Oval Office, and I mean it.”
Cheney called herself a conservative Republican and said she believed deeply in the party’s principles, founding ideals, and history, “but I love my country more,” she said.
She closed her speech calling on Democrats, Republicans and independents to join her “against those who would destroy our republic.”
“They are angry and they are determined but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united and committed to the cause of freedom,” she said.