Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) predicted the nation will “come to see the measure of” House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) character.
“Mike is somebody that I knew well,” Cheney said this week on “Politics Is Everything,” a podcast by the University of Virginia. “We were elected together. Our offices were next to each other, and Mike is somebody who says that he’s committed to defending the Constitution. But that’s not what he did when we were all tested in the aftermath of the 2020 election.”
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Cheney, an outspoken Donald Trump critic and one of only two Republicans on the House Jan. 6 committee, said Johnson was “acting in ways that he knew to be wrong” when he led a legal effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss.
“I think that the country unfortunately will come to see the measure of his character,” she said.
She also said it was concerning to see Johnson elected speaker, considering “he was willing to set aside what he knew to be the rulings of the courts, the requirements of the Constitution, in order to placate Donald Trump.”
He’s “dangerous” because he did so even though he knew the truth, Cheney said.
Johnson was elected speaker last week, breaking a weekslong stalemate that saw the GOP conference nominate and then fail to elect three other candidates.
The Louisiana Republican was so little-known before his nomination that some lawmakers admitted they had to Google him.
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A Google search will tell you that Johnson holds extreme positions not just on the 2020 election, but on the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, abortion, religion and other social issues.
This article has been amended to clarify language about the makeup of the Jan. 6 committee.