Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.) said that people should avoid labeling Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as “some sort of hero,” for her criticism of former President Trump, arguing that the congresswoman could have spoken out earlier.
In an interview on Thursday’s episode of “The Axe Files” podcast with CNN’s David Axelrod, Amash said that Cheney could have joined him when he warned “the president’s approach could lead to things like violence, could lead to a lot of animosity and contempt, and all sorts of things that would be harmful to our country.”
Amash became an independent in 2019 after he voted in favor of Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, he became a member of the Libertarian Party.
“She didn’t stand up for that view,” he said Thursday. “We had four years where she could have stood up and said, ‘There’s a problem here. What Donald Trump is doing is wrong.’”
Cheney removed from her position as House Republican Conference Chair earlier this month due to her repeated criticisms of Trump and his unsupported claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
Cheney has also maintained she regretted voting for the former president in 2020, and that she would do “everything” in her power to keep Trump away from the White House should he decide to run again in 2024.
Amash, who considered a 2020 presidential bid, questioned “what is it that changed” in Cheney’s mind for her to start pushing back on Trump.
“I say that not as someone who’s saying you can never change, you can never grow, you can never learn, but I’d like to see some real development when people learn,” Amash told Axelrod.
“Liz Cheney, what is it that you saw that made it so different for you versus how Trump was behaving, say, before January 6th?” he continued. “I mean, I don’t think there was any radical difference there. It was the same… because the outcome was different? Because that was the one time they stormed the Capitol?”
“One of the biggest problems we have in politics is that when someone is inconsistent like that, where they’re doing the wrong thing for four years and then they flip on a dime, there’s a tendency to turn them into heroes,” added Amash, who served in Congress for five terms. “And I think that’s a huge problem because it lets people get away with things.”
He went on to say, though, that he believed it was important to “give people the room to learn and change.”
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Amash warns against labeling Cheney "some sort of hero" over her criticism of Trump https://t.co/QhZUm62Pl5 pic.twitter.com/AaNf4Mmiwd
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