While some media pundits are painting Liz Cheney as some sort of political hero after being ousted from her leadership position within the GOP for what Seth Meyers described as “the crime of not showing sufficient loyalty to Donald Trump,” he wasn’t about to let the Wyoming congresswoman off the hook that easily.
In Wednesday’s “A Closer Look” segment, Meyers spent ten minutes reminding viewers that while Cheney may have voted to impeach Trump in January, she was also an integral part in bringing Trump to the political forefront in the first place:
“Cheney helped lay the groundwork for Trumpism and the authoritarian Republican party that exists today. She defended illegal torture and lied about it; championed the Iraq War; and in one TV interview, pointedly refused to denounce the racist lie that President Obama wasn’t a United States citizen. A lie, of course, that was central to Donald Trump’s political rise.”
It was only by acknowledging the reality of the 2020 Presidential Election—and the fact that there was no voter fraud—that Cheney made herself a traitor to her own party. And while Meyers allowed that “living in reality” (as Cheney has been) “should be the bare minimum for holding public office… today’s GOP is so batsh*t crazy that simply living in reality is considered heresy.”
While Cheney vowed to keep fighting on, it will likely be all for naught if she remains on an island of one. Because, as Meyers so eloquently put it, “The GOP has calculated that it simply cannot move on from Donald Trump. No matter how unpopular and destructive to the country, they can’t succeed without him.”
As disturbing as that may sound, it echoes the Orwellian thinking that Lindsey Graham recently espoused during an appearance on Fox News in which he stated that:
“I’ve always liked Liz Cheney, but she’s determined we can’t grow with President Trump. I’ve determined we can’t grow without him. If you don’t get that as a Republican, you’re making the biggest mistake in the history of the Republican party. The reason our party is growing with minorities and with working men and women is because President Trump appears to be on the side of people working really hard.”
(It’s important to listen to the somewhat odd voice inflection Graham used when saying “appears to be” in the sentence above.)
But Meyers was there to bring reality back into the picture, stating:
“Donald Trump is not on the side of people working really hard. He’s on the side of people working really hard for him. And even then, he’s not even on their side enough to pay them. [And] Cheney is as responsible as anyone else in GOP leadership for Trump’s rise. This is not about heralding her as a hero because she isn’t one. It’s about the GOP’s hard turn against democracy.”
In other words: You reap what you sow.
You can watch the full clip above, including Meyers’s attempts to imitate Trump at both the 2:55 and 4:49 marks, above.