During her remarks to colleagues at last night’s closed-door GOP House conference meeting, Liz Cheney defended her vote to impeach Trump over the January 6 Capitol riot and also said “we cannot become the party of QAnon,” referring to the deranged conspiracy theory that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has promoted in recent years.
“I owe you the truth, I owe my constituents the truth, you owe us the truth, we all owe each other that, and the truth is: We cannot become the party of QAnon, we cannot become the party of Holocaust denial, we cannot become the party of white supremacy,” Cheney said, according to a source in the meeting.
Here’s a longer excerpt of Cheney’s remarks last night:
“I have to tell you I am really, deeply, deeply concerned about where we are as a part I am very concerned about the extent to which we are spending all of our time on these issues and these battles and not on the battles that really matter, the battles over substance, the battles over ensuring that we don’t watch the Biden administration go down the path where they have an open runway to absolutely eliminate our freedom. I’m also concerned we have to stand up. I owe you the truth, I owe my constituents the truth, you owe us the truth, we all owe each other that, and the truth is: we cannot become the party of QAnon, we cannot become the party of Holocaust denial, we cannot become the party of white supremacy. We all watched in horror on what happened on January 6th. We had a memorial service this morning for Officer Sicknick, one of the things that we saw on January 6th were members of the mob attempting to break into this building and breaking into this building wearing badges of Neo-Nazis, wearing the symbols of white supremacy—that can never be us. If we ever want to win another election, if we ever want to get back to the point where we are fighting and battling and convincing people that they ought to support us, we have to do it on ideals. We are the party of Lincoln. We are the party of Reagan. We believe in honor and courage, limited government and low taxes. We believe in a stronger national defense and, mostly, we believe in fidelity to the Constitution of the United States.”
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy later told reporters that “QAnon has no place inside our party. Marjorie Greene actually said that inside our conference today.”
McCarthy faced some criticism for also saying last night that he was “denouncing Q-on. I don’t know if I say it right, I don’t even know what it is.”
According to McCarthy, the reason Republicans won’t deny Greene committee assignments is that she had made her wildly conspiratorial, bigoted, and violent remarks before she was a member of Congress.
McCarthy indicated that if Greene had made similar comments as a member of Congress, Republicans would strip deny her all committee assignments, just as they had done to former Iowa congressman Steve King. “Now that you’re a member of Congress, now it’s a responsibility of our conference to hold people accountable,” McCarthy said. “We removed Steve King when he made comments as a member of Congress.”
House Democrats will put a resolution up for a vote before the whole House later this afternoon on the floor to strip Greene of committee assignments.
