Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s congressional representative at the time, backed President Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.
Then the January 6 attack happened.
Cheney, now former Wyoming representative, took to the Center for the Arts stage Tuesday night as the second speaker in the university’s 2026-27 Distinguished Speakers series to recount what she saw that day and the aftermath.
She had seen Trump in the Oval Office read a note that a civilian was shot at the entrance to the House Chamber, put it down on the table and continue watching a mob storm the U.S. Capitol on television after Trump falsely alleged the election was "stolen" on January 6, 2021.
Trump would refuse to call the mob off for three hours, Cheney said.
“That’s something that is fundamentally depraved,” she said.
Cheney then became one of Trump’s largest critics in the Republican party, serving as vice chair of the House of Representatives’ committee investigation into the January 6 attack and voting for his impeachment.
“There were a number of Republicans who were also in leadership at the time who came to me and said, ‘You know what? You’re going to need to apologize for having voted to impeach the president,’” Cheney said. “I was like, ‘What planet are you guys living on? I’m not going to apologize.’”
Eventually, Trump’s tight hold on the party ended her career: she was ousted from the third-highest position in the party by fellow Republicans and lost in the 2022 congressional Republican primaries in Wyoming. Since then, Cheney wrote a memoir, “Oath and Honor,” on her experiences on January 6, 2021 and afterward.
Cheney often thinks that if she had asked her Republican colleagues before the January 6 attack if there was a moment where they had to decide between upholding the constitution versus maintaining support for the party. She said that, when asked as a hypothetical in a “vacuum,” they would all unanimously stand with the constitution.
“But the real test of leadership is, ‘Do you do that when it’s really hard?” said Cheney.
But when she was ousted, what gave her hope was that a few young staff members left the chamber with her.
“They’re at the beginning of their careers and they didn’t have to do that,” Cheney said.
Cheney holds that if an American has frustration with the government, they ought to get involved, rather than observe with a scowl from the outskirts.
And the American people did just that. During last week’s election, an estimated 124 million Americans cast ballots in one of the highest midterm turnouts in more than a century and the Democrats had taken control of both the House and the Senate.
The recent Blue Wave is a result of “people who said, ‘I’m not just going to sit on these sidelines anymore,” Cheney said.
Of course the Democrats have a lot of work to do. They need to secure the U.S. elections to ensure a riot like the one on January 6, 2021 doesn’t happen again and further investigate into the “corruption” of Trump’s “enrichment” of himself and potentially, his family throughout the presidency.
“Democrats have a big job and a big responsibility,” Cheney said.
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