this past week the house elect committee investigating the january 6th attack on
the capital shifted into a higher gear on thursday it subpoenaed four
of former president donald trump's top advisers including his chief of staff for documents and
depositions about the former president's actions on the day of the siege and days leading up to it
at the center of the select committee's probe is wyoming representative liz chaney like
a lone ranger riding out of the west she's one of the few republicans willing to daring
to stand up to mr trump and house republican leaders who opposed her joining the committee
when we spoke to congresswoman cheney at the capitol on wednesday
we asked about a call she got from house speaker nancy pelosi the story will continue in a moment
she called me and asked me to be a member of the committee and i accepted right away right away no
hesitation none because it's so important and and because i also know that that my participation in
the committee makes that committee bipartisan no one will question you know my conservative
credentials but most republicans in the house see what you're doing as a betrayal they look
at nancy pelosi even you have said you said this i've got a quote here you said the democrats
under nancy pelosi's leadership have become the party of anti-semitism infanticide and socialism
direct quote from you and yet here you are it's considered nancy pelosi's committee look i i think
that millions of people around the country have been betrayed and misled and deceived by donald
trump he has said that the election was stolen he continues to say that he continues to say things
that aren't true and continues to raise money off of those claims and so to me there's just
not a question she's one of only two republicans on the nine-member committee and a prominent face
of it since she was elevated to vice chair we must also know what happened every minute of that day
in the white house republicans in congress feel that by joining this january 6 panel
you are helping to keep the focus on trump instead of on the shortcomings of the biden administration
those who think that by ignoring trump
he will go away have been proven wrong and in my view the american people they deserve better
than having to choose between what i think are the really disastrous policies of joe biden in a whole
range of areas really bad for our economy from a national security perspective what's happened what
he's done in afghanistan very dangerous policies for the country but the alternative cannot be
a man who doesn't believe in the rule of law and who violated his oath of office her unabashed
defiance of donald trump has him fighting back the liz cheney's of the world we got to get rid of him
he singled her out at his rally on january 6th and later said she's a warmongering fool
and a horrible human being he's made defeating her next year in her re-election in wyoming one
of his top priorities she's risking her political career most republicans we've spoken to feel that
uh you miscalculated that you didn't figure out ahead of time that it was going to be
this intense this hot this perpetual you know it wasn't a calculation you didn't weigh and measure
no there wasn't a yellow pad with the pros and the cons and no it was this is what what he has done
i watched while the attack was underway understood very clearly what he did on january 6th what he
failed to do on january 6th instead of stopping the attack while it was underway he was busy
calling up senators trying to get them to delay the count so there was no calculation i think he's
very dangerous here in wyoming liz chaney at 55 is having to fight like hell to win her fourth term
as mr trump endorsed one of her opponents harriet hageman a longtime cheney supporter
and family friend the republican party here has disowned you they've called for your resignation
we've been told your approval rating here is down around 30 percent can you win this seat
absolutely i think it's going to be the most important house race in the country uh in 2022
and and it will be one where people do have the opportunity to say we want to
stand for the constitution do you think a vote against you is a vote against the constitution
a vote against me in this race a vote for whomever donald trump has endorsed
is a vote for somebody who's willing to perpetuate the big lie
somebody who's willing to put allegiance to trump above allegiance to the constitution absolutely
being in trouble in wyoming is almost unfathomable for a cheney
help to ensure that the voice of wyoming is heard in washington despite criticism of her father dick
cheney's tenure as vice president when he pressed the case for the broadly discredited war in iraq
and harsh interrogation techniques he's been long admired here having been wyoming's congressman for
10 years did you go to your father and ask for his advice on this and did he encourage
you to wage this rebellion well i talk to my dad probably just about every single day and he sees
things the way that i see them she was exposed to the highest levels of power in washington
when her father was president ford's chief of staff but she says her roots are in wyoming
where the cowboy ethic of the maverick loner runs deep she's been called steely
and as emotional as algebra but she softens up when she talks about her family i miss these years
they're little babies most people don't know that she's been married for 29 years and is the mother
of five children ranging in age from 15 to 27. as they grew up she became a rodeo mom one is a rodeo
barrel gracie is that's right she gave me the phrase cowgirl up which is you know if things
are things are rough you got a cowgirl up and keep going she's having to cowgirl up a lot in
washington in may her fellow republicans stripped her of her leadership position in the house
and she began denouncing minority leader kevin mccarthy in scathing and personal terms what he's
done is embrace donald trump and if i were doing what he's doing i i would be deeply ashamed of
myself i don't know how you explain that to your children when you are in a situation where you
have somebody who did what donald trump did it is absolutely clear he cannot continue to be somebody
you embrace but are you saying you can't support anybody who supports him i'm saying that there are
people who supported donald trump because of his policies but there's a difference between
somebody who voted for donald trump and being the republican leader after an insurrection and
setting all of that aside and going to mar-a-lago and and rehabilitating him bringing him back in
that to me is unforgivable once she began assailing donald trump and republicans who
support him a record amount of money has poured into her campaign some of it we're told from
democrats you have become in a way a hero to the liberals which is kind of funny because as you say
yourself you're one of the most conservative members of the house you're anti-abortion i'm
pro-life yes you're pro-life yes your pro-gun rights and you voted to repeal obamacare do you
regret that vote i do not no waterboarding aka torture well it's not torture but you support
waterboarding i do absolutely and then there's her long-held opposition to same-sex marriage which
prompted a bitter falling out with her sister mary your sister's gay she's married she has children
and in 2013 you came out against same-sex marriage while your father went the other way
and it was looked upon as courageous when he did that how do you defend what you did i was wrong
i was wrong i love my sister very much uh i love uh her family very much and
and i was wrong it's a it's a very personal issue and very personal for my family
i believe that my dad was right and my sister and i have had that conversation
wow i was not expecting that you know this this is an issue that
we have to recognize you know as as human beings that we need to work against discrimination
of all kinds in our country in our state we were at an event a few nights ago and and uh there was
a young woman who said she doesn't feel safe uh sometimes uh because she's transgender and
nobody should feel unsafe freedom means freedom for everybody okay so then we'll do those her
change of heart is a rare break for her from traditional party orthodoxy once donald trump
became the republican nominee for president in 2016 she supported him you stuck with him through
the hollywood access tape through his insults on john mccain through his bullying tweets i
supported donald trump's policies i voted with him something like 93 percent of the time because
his policies uh were were the right ones in many ways when i disagreed with him i spoke out but
not on not on character on the issues that mattered for wyoming i stood with him
you know you can say you disagree with him you think that his character was bad which it was
all of those things but the line that can't be crossed is what happened after the election
it's not that liz cheney doesn't have any republican support former president george w
bush is holding a fundraiser for her and senators mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham have sent in
donations from their political action committees but most republicans in office have shied away
have members of congress republicans come up to you privately and whispered in your
ear way to go liz and encouraged you but won't come forward and say that publicly yes a lot
yes both in the house and the senate i mean if they really think what you're doing is right
and they admire it and they encourage it and they won't do it what is that the argument that
that you often hear is that if you do something that's perceived as against trump that you know
you'll put yourself in political peril and that's a self-fulfilling prophecy because if republican
leaders don't stand up and condemn what happened then the voices in the party that are so dangerous
will only get louder and stronger polls say that 78 of republicans do not think that joe biden was
legitimately elected and i wonder how do you fight an untruth how do you stand up
to the anti-vaxxers how do you stand up to q anon how do you stand up to a president who says
the election and falsely that the election was rigged when you look at the the spread of these
mistruths and the spread of the disinformation you know silence enables it silence enables the liar
and silence helps it to spread so the first thing you have to do is say no i'm not going to accept
that we're going to live in a post-truth world it's a toxin leslie in in our in our political
bloodstream because when we allow that to continue to go on in the face of rulings of the courts
in the face of recounts in the face of everything that's gone on to demonstrate that there was not
fraud that would have changed the outcome then we all if we do that we are contributing to the
undermining of our system and it's a really serious and dangerous moment because of that