Liz Cheney warns in new book that the nation faces danger if Trump returns to White House

WASHINGTON — “In a just world,” ex-Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., writes in her new book, “Oath and Honor, A Memoir and a Warning,” former President Donald Trump, “who attempted to overturn an election and seize power — would have no political future.”

That Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — despite the criminal prosecutions he is facing and the findings of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, where Cheney served as vice chair — means, she said, “we may have many darker chapters ahead.”

Cheney’s book is out Tuesday, and in a conversation Monday we talked about the danger the nation faces if Trump returns to the White House. On a lighter note, at the end we chatted about her years living in Chicago while a University of Chicago law student.

If reelected, Trump would refuse to leave the White House: Cheney said that after a second term, Trump is “unlikely to leave office.” Trump “attempted to seize power once before, and I think there’s no question he would do it again. So I think the threat is very real.”

On what Cheney calls the nation “sleepwalking into a dictatorship:” “The threat that he poses is so un-American and so unprecedented that it can be hard for people to recognize how grave the threat is. And we have also become numb to so much of what he says and what he did. And you have leading members of the Republican Party trying to whitewash what he did.” She noted that over 80 House Republicans have already endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid.

“It’s so hard to believe that in the United States of America, we could be faced with a president who is willing to torch the Constitution. ... He has to be defeated, and people can’t be bystanders.”

On whether there is a path to stop Trump from being the GOP presidential nominee: If Trump is the nominee, “then we have to build a new coalition of Republicans and Democrats and independents. We have to be willing to form alliances with people on whom we might not have any other, or very few other, areas of agreement from a policy perspective. We have to form alliances with like-minded pro-Constitution American citizens who say we’re going to put partisanship aside and vote to ensure we defeat Donald Trump.”

On whether to try to defeat Trump with a third-party candidate or urging Republicans to vote Democratic: “I don’t think that we know for sure yet what the playing field is going to look like, so I think we have to be willing to consider both of these options.”

On Cheney running for president: “I haven’t made a decision yet about whether I will run. But it’s a decision I’ll make over the next couple of months. And I won’t do anything that I determine is going to help Donald Trump. I think that’s very important. And I really think about it much more as a decision about stopping him rather than necessarily a decision about me personally. But I certainly will be looking at all the different options over the next two months or so.”

On the need to get the gavel away from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., an election denier:  Until he became speaker in October, Johnson was unknown to the public, a behind-the-scenes player. Cheney recounts in the early chapters of her book, completed in September, the inside story about his moves to try to keep Trump in power.

“It’s a dangerous situation if we get to Jan. 6, 2025,” when the electoral votes from the 2024 election are counted in Congress. “There’s a very real chance that the presidential election could be thrown into the House of Representatives, if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes. And the prospect of Mike Johnson in the speaker’s chair under those circumstances is a really serious and dangerous one. And I think, it’s very important that, frankly, that not be the case.”

On ending GOP control of the House: “I think we’ve arrived at a point where we can’t count on a group of Republicans elected in the House to defend the Constitution. And so I think, given the dangers that we face, that it is less of a threat to the republic if we have a Democratic majority in the House.”

On Republican enablers and collaborators: “You have many, many members, elected officials in the Republican Party who know how dangerous Donald Trump is, they know that he is not telling the truth, but they are going along … and I think those people have to be held accountable.”

On whether Trump could survive politically without enablers and collaborators at the local, state and federal level: “No, he needs them.”

On the end of the Republican Party as she knows it: “It certainly descended into a really destructive place. And each day that goes by makes it less and less likely that it can be resuscitated.”

On Cheney’s Chicago life: Cheney lived in the city — at McClurg Court, near Navy Pier — while attending the University of Chicago Law School, graduating in 1996.  “It was a very special time. My first daughter was born at the end of my first year. She was born in the University of Chicago hospital … one of my favorite professors when I was at the University of Chicago Law School was Elena Kagan, who was my civil procedure professor.” Kagan is now a Supreme Court justice.

While at the Hyde Park campus, Cheney said she took classes on Egyptian archaeology at the Oriental Institute, now called the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia and North Africa.