Former Representative Liz Cheney made a bleak prediction about the future of the U.S. if former President Donald Trump is reelected in 2024.
Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, emerged as one of Trump's most vocal critics in Congress following the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Cheney was the vice chair of the House committee that investigated the former president's role in the riot, during which hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election. Cheney lost her seat in the 2020 midterm primaries.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning's John Dickerson, which was posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, Cheney issued a warning to America.
"You say Donald Trump, if he is reelected, it will be the end of the Republic. What do you mean?" Dickerson asked Cheney.
Cheney replied: "He's told us what he will do. It's very easy to see the steps that he will take. People who say, well, if he's elected it's not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances, don't fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted.
"One of the things that we see happening today is sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States."
Newsweek reached out to Cheney via email for comment.
In Cheney's new book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, which will be released on Tuesday, she writes about the upcoming presidential election.
"We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic," she wrote. "As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution."
In December 2022, Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election he lost to President Joe Biden in a rant on his social media platform, Truth Social. Trump has continually claimed, without evidence, that the election was stolen via widespread voter fraud.
"Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?" Trump said. "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."
Reacting to Cheney's book, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, told Newsweek via email: "Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper.
"These are nothing more than completely fabricated stories because President Trump is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican nominee and the strongest candidate to beat Crooked Joe Biden. Liz clearly suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome and needs to address the underlying issues in her own personal life."
Update 12/1/23, 2:35 p.m. ET: This story was been updated with comment from Steven Cheung.
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