Liz Cheney, although she spent most of her life outside of Wyoming, once embodied the politics and spirit of the Equality State. At least that’s what Republicans told us when she successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and in her first two re-election attempts.
Republicans, including U.S. Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, want nothing more to do with her. But Barrasso has been slow to join in on this revisionist history — until last week, he chose not to speak ill of Cheney despite numerous opportunities to do so.
President Joe Biden on Thursday awarded Cheney the nation’s second-highest civilian honor when he presented her with the Presidential Citizens’ Medal “for putting the American people above party.”
The MAGA movement exploded. Barrasso too.
“President Biden was either going to pardon Liz Cheney or give her an award,” Barrasso said in a statement. “She doesn’t deserve either. She represents partisanship and division – not Wyoming.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter has been thrown under the bus repeatedly by members of her party since 2021, when she argued that then-President Donald Trump posed a danger to American democracy and the rule of law. Is Barrasso’s change of heart genuine or an example of trying to advance his own political career?
It doesn’t take much political courage for a Republican to say that Cheney doesn’t deserve to be honored. But when Trump calls for Cheney’s arrest, will Barrasso play along to stay in the president-elect’s good graces?
Cheney voted with Trump on 93% of the time during his first term. She won her third term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020 with more than two-thirds of the vote, just one percentage point behind Trump’s total in Wyoming.
As the No. 3 Republican in the House, Cheney had a golden ticket to become speaker of the chamber if she would simply stay loyal to Trump.
But Cheney voted to impeach Trump for his actions during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, when she said he “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
Defending democracy and attempting to punish anyone who tries to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power has proven to be a lost message in Wyoming. Cheney was vice chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee during the January 6 attack, which released a final report revealing that Trump was engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election Biden’s legal.
The lives of every lawmaker present at the Capitol this afternoon were in danger. But Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), the only other Republican named to the bipartisan committee, did not seek re-election. That made Cheney the only GOP member willing to put his political career on the line.
You all know the story: Republicans turned on Cheney, and she lost the 2022 primary to her Trump-backed rival, Harriet Hageman, by more than 63,000 votes.
But long after the Jan. 6 attack and Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump, Barrasso appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and said he still supported Cheney.
“I support her,” Barrasso said. “I completely disagree with her on the issue of impeachment. She voted one way, I voted the other.
The senator explained that it was important that he and Cheney worked together every day because the Biden administration was promoting energy policies that were “devastating to Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West.”
Unlike many Wyoming politicians, Barrasso remained neutral in the 2022 GOP House primary. The closest he came to entering the fray was about a month before the election, when he told Fox News Wyoming lacked Democratic voters for Cheney to win.
“Wyoming politics is very personal. It’s face to face, it’s city to city,” Barrasso said. “With the traveling I’ve been doing across the state, I think she has a lot of work to do if she hopes to win the primary.”
In stark contrast, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) approved Hageman a week before the primary. She called her a Wyoming conservative “who knows how to fight Washington, D.C. — and win.”
Lummis then did not mention Cheney. But after Biden awarded Cheney the Citizens’ Medal, the senator had plenty to say.
Lummis told Cowboy State Daily that Cheney spent the last few years “perpetuate his vendetta against Donald Trump“, and the Democrats chose her to serve on the select committee so they could pretend it was bipartisan and fair.
“Wyoming Republicans made their views (on Cheney’s so-called leadership) clear on the made-for-TV committee on Jan. 6 when she lost her reelection bid by a staggering 40 percent. ” Lummis said. (On the day of the riot, Lummis called the attack on the Capitol an “attack on democracy.”)
Barrasso seemed to be in Cheney’s corner for a long time. When Cheney announced his campaign against Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) in 2013, Barrasso supported his Senate colleague but refused to attack Cheney.
“I think Liz is great and I think she has a very, very bright future,” Barrasso told MSNBC. “I just think it’s the wrong race at the wrong time.”
Cheney did not defend Barrasso in 2017, when the senator was rumored to face major challenges next year from two far-right Republicans: Jackson-based financier Foster Friess and founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince. Enzi supported Barrasso’s “effective leadership for Wyoming,” while Cheney said nothing.
Speculation at the time suggested that Cheney did not want to be linked to Barrasso, who was seen as a target of populist pro-Trump forces within the GOP.
“You don’t want to look like you’re campaigning with John Barrasso,” Bill Cubin, a longtime Republican political consultant, told the Casper Star-Tribune. “You want to have your own race and let your own fortune depend on you.”
Barrasso has generally had a good relationship with Trump – they visited troops in Afghanistan together for Thanksgiving in 2019 – but it sometimes went off the rails. In January 2023, the former president was asked about Barrasso by a host of a Sheridan radio show.
“I kind of think he’s a good man, but he turned out to be a real stooge for (then Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell,” Trump responded.
Despite this public insult, Barrasso enthusiastically campaigned for Trump, and the former president endorsed his successful bid for a fourth term.
Barrasso, who this month was elevated to the Senate’s No. 2 Republican as majority whip, praised Trump’s terrible Cabinet nominees and pledged to get them confirmed quickly. This is no surprise given that Trump remains extremely popular among Wyoming Republicans.
But how will Barrasso respond to Trump’s incessant demand to lock up Cheney and the other members of the January 6 committee? Will he defend the US Constitution and the rule of law, or simply allow Trump to use the Justice Department to punish his enemies? If you are looking for a clue, know that Barrasso did everything possible to avoid criticizing Trump for defending January 6 rioters’ calls to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Cheney is not backing down, nor should she. I disagree with almost every vote Cheney cast in Congress, but when it came time to defend democracy against a future king, she passed the patriotic test.
Cheney responded to Trump’s threats on X, formerly Twitter. “Now that you are back in office, the American people must reject your latest malicious lies and become the guard of our Constitutional Republic – to protect the America we love from you,” she wrote.
Barrasso said Cheney did not deserve a pardon, referencing Biden’s reported consideration of granting preemptive pardons to Trump’s enemies so the president-elect could not retaliate against them with bogus prosecutions.
Cheney said she didn’t want a pardon because she didn’t do anything wrong, and she’s right. But that doesn’t mean Biden shouldn’t do it, especially if he thinks Congress and the courts won’t stop Trump.
Based on Barrasso and Lummis’ reaction to Cheney’s medal, I would prefer a get-out-of-jail-free card over an award. Politicians know that today’s friend can be tomorrow’s powerful enemy, and Cheney should realize that with the Republican Party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, there is little left something to protect her.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the name of Vice President Mike Pence. —Ed.