Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) blasted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who met with former President Trump along with Senate Republicans on Thursday.
Cheney, who left Congress after losing her 2022 reelection bid, said the meeting showed McConnell’s support for the former president, whom she called a “danger to the republic.”
“Mitch McConnell knows that Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol and then ‘happily watched on TV’ as his mob brutally beat police officers and hunted down the vice president,” she said. Posted on social platform X“He knows that for hours, Trump refused to tell the rioters to leave, and continued to ‘repeat lies about the election and praise criminals even as police officers bled.'”
“He knows that Trump has committed a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and is a danger to the republic,” she continued. “Trump and his allies will be defeated, and the shame of those who enabled them, like McConnell, will go down in history.”
It was Trump’s first time speaking with Republican senators since 2021, and the first time he’s sat in the same room with McConnell since 2020, after years of feuding between the two.
“It was positive,” McConnell told reporters after the meeting.
“He and I had a chance to speak, we shook hands a few times, and he got a huge standing ovation,” he said. “It was a completely positive meeting. I can’t think of anything negative to come out of the meeting.”
The former president also met with House Republicans early Thursday. The meeting came as Republicans in both the House and Senate began preparing aggressive policy plans in case the president is re-elected and Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress.
Cheney was one of the few Republicans who consistently sought to hold President Trump responsible for the attack on the Capitol. She served on the House Committee on January 6th and argued that the attack was a source of rift with the Republican Party.
The former congressman has since become one of Trump’s most vocal critics in his party. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), another vocal Trump critic, had initially planned to skip the meeting but changed his mind after an out-of-town flight was canceled.
