Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney tweeted a screenshot of a tweet written by Arizona Republican Representative Paul Gosar supporting former Republican President Donald Trump's call for the "termination" of the United States Constitution. Cheney also criticized GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for failing to hold Trump accountable for his prior undemocratic behavior.
Last week, Trump suggested the Constitution should be voided following the “Twitter files” leak of a series of messages between the social media platform's leadership team in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. His idea was supported by Gosar, who wrote "Unprecedented fraud requires [an] unprecedented cure."
Gosar later deleted his tweet, but not before nimble Twitter users had already saved screenshots. Cheney then took McCarthy to task for failing to condemn Trump in the nearly two years since he and his supporters launched a failed coup d'etat to install him as President.
Cheney wrote:
[McCarthy] - Did you see this tweet before [Gosar] deleted it?"
"Time to condemn Trump yet?"
You can see Cheney's tweet below.
Cheney's tweet to McCarthy is the latest example of her unrelenting criticism of McCarthy and Republicans who have failed to condemn Trump for the January 6 insurrection, the day a White nationalist led mob of Trump's supporters attacked the nation's seat of government on the false premise the 2020 general election had been stolen.
The ensuing riot resulted in at least five deaths, over 100 injuries to law enforcement and over $1 million in damages.
Cheney angered her own party and was ousted from her leadership position in the House of Representatives after she pushed back against Trump's falsehoods about the integrity of the 2020 election. Trump issued a statement more than three months after Democratic President Joe Biden took office calling Biden's victory "the big lie."
Cheney responded shortly afterward with a statement of her own affirming the election "was not stolen," adding anyone who says it was is "turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system."
McCarthy has since denied the successful effort to remove Cheney from her position as the House's third-ranking Republican is in any way related to her vote to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection against Congress.
McCarthy himself was a very vocal election denier and spent weeks ahead of the attack undermining the electoral process, vowing not to certify Biden's election win. In fact, he still voted to overturn the presidential election results in the hours after the attack.
He also lied about calling for Trump to resign—even after an audio recording revealed he had done just that—and later famously reconciled with the former President at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
Many have echoed Cheney's criticisms of McCarthy and Gosar.
Time and again, McCarthy has failed to hold accountable—and seemed to tolerate—those in his caucus like Gosar who have openly flouted the Constitution, rule of law, ethics and common decency.
Gosar has long been one of the more controversial members of Congress and made headlines earlier this year after he denied he planned to attend a far-right conference with ties to White nationalist groups on April 20, the birthday of German Nazi Party leader and Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Hitler, despite promoting his scheduled appearance on Instagram.
Gosar also played an important role in the January 6 insurrection, according to an October 2021 Rolling Stone article which noted several supporters of former President Trump who helped plan the insurrection had multiple planning sessions with senior White House staffers and Republican members of Congress.
Sources who spoke to the magazine said they met with several high-profile Trump Republican acolytes, including Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Gosar himself.
Organizers claim Gosar promised "blanket pardons" to anyone who participated in the attack, adding they "would talk to Boebert's team, Cawthorn's team, Gosar's team like back to back to back to back."
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