“Defeat Liz Cheney in the next election and Wyoming will bring Washington to its knees,” he told a group of hundreds of spectators, many of whom were not wearing masks. “How can you call yourself a representative if you do not represent the will of the people? That is what all neo-conquer about Arab dictators. I think perhaps we should ask the same question to a ring road bureaucrat turned into a fake cow who supported an impeachment deeply unpopular in the state of Wyoming. “
Gaetz revealed her intention to campaign against Cheney after she and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump for inciting a Capitol insurrection. The move was the most bipartisan impeachment in the history of the United States. But the move against a president who has become an exciting figure for his party has sparked vitriol, with calls for Cheney to be expelled from his leadership position on the right flank of the bench.
But the impeachment conversation made only a superficial appearance at Gaetz’s rally on Thursday. The congressman mainly chose to portray Cheney as colluding with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Democrats like President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to uphold a status quo that works for Washington at the expense of America. Street. He accused Cheney of having no contact with the cowboy values of his home state of Wyoming, calling himself an advocate of “prairie populism”.
“The truth is that the establishment in both political parties have come together to screw our countrymen for generations,” said Gaetz. “Joe Biden’s private club, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney, they want to return our government to its default setting: enrich them.”
The claim that Cheney and his Democratic colleagues are battling for the same team contrasted with the congresswoman’s simultaneous introduction on Thursday of legislation that challenges Biden’s recent executive order on energy production.
Gaetz also attacked Cheney for the role his father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, played in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He disparagingly called Liz Cheney a “neoconservative”, saying that she advocated unnecessary wars in the Middle East.
“Neoconservatives say we have to fight them abroad, so we don’t have to fight them at home,” said Gaetz. “I was going to say that maybe we should fight the neocons at home so we don’t have to fight them in Washington, DC But that’s a problem, isn’t it, because the neocons are at home in Washington, DC”
“The real cowboys, I think, fought the Indians so they could use the land, but what are America’s soldiers fighting for Liz Cheney to send around the world?” he added. “Places that most Americans couldn’t even pinpoint on a map.”
Much of the event followed Trump’s rally manual, with talking points reflecting the ex-president’s bombastic public comments. Trump often expressed his contempt for Cheney while he was president, saying to his supporters just before they broke into the Capitol on January 6, “We have to get rid of the weak congressmen, those who are not good, the Liz Cheneys of the world.”
At one point, Gaetz even echoed Trump’s disdain for developing countries in a provocation in Congress, saying: “A nation that sends its best to fight in the worst nations in the world must not send its worst to be its representatives in the United States Congress. “
Cheney’s team avoided Gaetz’s attacks, with a member of his office telling CNN this week: “Mr Gaetz can leave his beauty bag at home. In Wyoming, men don’t wear makeup.” (The dig is an apparent reference to the use of Gaetz makeup in an HBO documentary about his time in office).
In a statement to POLITICO, former Wyoming state deputy Amy Edmonds put it equally bluntly on Thursday: “Wyoming doesn’t like it when outsiders come into our state and try to tell us what to do.”