GOP conference chair Liz Cheney
Elizabeth (Liz) Lynn Cheney The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Facebook – All American Adults Can Get a Vaccine; decision Friday on J&J vax Republicans backing Trump’s impeachment, see boosting fundraising Freedom Caucus member condemns GOP group pushing ‘Anglo-Saxon political traditions’ MORE (R-Wyo.) Made a dry comment on Tuesday when asked if Donald Trump
Donald TrumpHouse Votes To Condemn Chinese Government Over Hong Kong Former Vice President Walter Mondale Dies At Age 93 White House Prepares For Chauvin’s Ruling MORE was scheduled to appear at House Republicans’ Florida retreat next week, “I didn’t invite him.”
The joke elicited laughter from reporters and highlighted ongoing tensions between the former president and the top GOP woman in Congress, who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the January 6 Capitol uprising.
Last week, Trump said he would “soon” support a pro-Trump challenger to “Crazy Liz Cheney.” Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, responded similarly by saying she would not support Trump if he decided to run for president again in 2024.
Trump, who has crouched in his Mar-a-Lago resort, is just a short flight from Orlando, where Republicans hold their annual rally from April 25-27. But it doesn’t seem like Trump will address Republicans like he did at previous GOP retreats in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and at the Greenbriar resort in West Virginia.
Next week’s retreat is sponsored by the nonprofit Congressional Institute, which formally invites all speakers. But a spokesperson for the institute said in an email on Tuesday: “We have not been invited [Trump], and none of the Republican leaders have asked us to invite him. “
The Republican Party is at war with itself after the attack on the Capitol and in the post-Trump era. Cheney and a small faction of Republicans urge the party to reject Trump and move on, while majority of GOP lawmakers embrace the former president, who remains a popular figure at the conservative base and flirts with a rematch against President Biden in 2024..
Some of Trump’s most committed loyalists in Congress, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) And Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Had spoken of launching a pro-Trump ‘America First Caucus’. A draft policy platform for the caucus, reportedly drafted by the staff, called for the defense of America’s “unique Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure projects that reflect “European architecture”.
The proposed caucus has been outright condemned by Republicans across the political spectrum, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) And former speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
When Cheney spoke to reporters on Tuesday, she stepped up in what her first comments to the camera were about the America First Caucus.
“Any kind of nativism or racism or anti-Semitism – those things are bad,” Cheney said in the Capitol. “And that has to be very clear, and we as Americans have to be willing to speak that out.”