Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) Slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for meeting with former President Donald Trump on Thursday, accusing McConnell of empowering Trump, whom she labeled “a danger to our Republic.”
“Mitch McConnell knows Trump provoked the violent attack on our Capitol and then ‘watched television happily’ as his mob brutally beat police officers and hunted the Vice President,” Cheney posted on social platform X. “He knows Trump refused for hours to tell his mob to leave and ‘even then with police officers bleeding … he kept repeating his election lies and praising the criminals.’”
She continued, “He knows Trump committed a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and is a danger to our Republic. Trump and his collaborators will be defeated, and history will remember the shame of people like McConnell who enabled them.”
This encounter marked Trump’s first visit to Capitol Hill since 2021 and his first face-to-face with McConnell since 2020 after years of intense rivalry.
McConnell downplayed the tension, calling the meeting “positive.”
“He and I got a chance to talk, we shook hands a few times. He got a lot of standing ovations,” McConnell told reporters. “It was an entirely positive meeting. I can’t think of anything to tell you out of it that was negative.”
Trump’s gathering with Republican senators and earlier with the House GOP underscores the party’s aggressive plans should they regain control of both chambers with Trump’s potential reelection.
Cheney, a relentless Trump critic, was a key figure on the House Jan. 6 committee, holding Trump accountable for the Capitol attack, which led to her fallout with the GOP.
Since her departure from Congress, Cheney has remained a vocal adversary of Trump within the party. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), another outspoken critic, had initially planned to skip the meeting but attended after his flight out of town was canceled.
