Trump is ‘single most dangerous threat’ to the US, warns Republican Liz Cheney

Moderate, whose opposition to former president had cost her a congressional seat, considers a 2024 presidential run

Donald Trump is “the single most dangerous threat” the US faces as he seeks a return to the Oval Office, according to Liz Cheney, the moderate Republican whose opposition to her party leader’s presidency cost her a congressional seat she held for six years.

“He cannot be the next president because if he is, all of the things that he attempted to do but was stopped from doing by responsible people … he will do,” Cheney – the daughter of former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney – said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “There will be no guardrails. And everyone has been left warned.”

Cheney’s fiery remarks come as the former president fights more than 90 criminal charges for subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, retention of government secrets after his presidency, and hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels. He is also grappling with civil lawsuits over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.

Though his popularity with the general public is low, he maintains substantial polling leads in the race to clinch the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

If Cheney’s remarks on Sunday are any indication, it is an advantage she can hardly fathom after serving as the vice-chair of the US House committee which investigated the deadly Capitol attack staged by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Cheney and her colleagues recommended that the justice department file criminal charges against Trump in connection with the Capitol uprising before the four indictments obtained against him since March.

“After January 6 … there can be no question that he will unravel the institutions of our democracy,” Cheney said, alluding to Trump supporters’ desperate but unsuccessful attack to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 race. “So we are facing a moment in American politics where we have to set aside partisanship, and we have to make sure that people who believe in the constitution are willing to come together to prevent him from ever again setting foot anywhere near the Oval Office.”

The House Capitol attack committee’s recommendation was one of Cheney’s last congressional acts before she left office in January. She lost her bid to be re-elected to a Wyoming’s sole House seat she had held since 2017 after Trump successfully supported Harriet Hageman’s run against her in a Republican primary.

Hageman subsequently won a runoff election and succeeded Cheney as their district’s House representative.

Additionally, Cheney on Sunday suggested to both State of the Union and CBS’s Face the Nation that she was mulling joining the crowded field of presidential hopefuls signing up to challenge Biden in 2024.

She also remarked to Face the Nation that it should not be shocking for anyone to see Republicans struggle to appoint a replacement for Kevin McCarthy after far-right members of his party engineered his unprecedented removal as House speaker on 3 October.

After all, McCarthy and the first two House Republicans who unsuccessfully launched bids to succeed him – Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan – all objected to certifying Trump’s 2020 defeat.

“So it’s not a surprise that we are where we are,” Cheney said. “But it’s a disgrace, and it’s an embarrassment.”

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