Liz Cheney Rips Trump and J.D. Vance a New One in Explosive Presser

Liz Cheney has advice for Kamala Harris for her debate next week: “Let Trump be Trump.”

The former Republican Wyoming representative spoke with Atlantic writer Mark Leibovich in Texas on Friday, following her endorsement of Harris for president this week. In her conversation, she shared words of wisdom for Harris—and a brutally honest condemnation of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

When asked how Harris should approach Tuesday’s presidential debate against Trump, Cheney responded by saying that Harris should relish the fact that this is an “opportunity [where] Donald Trump gets to show the American people who he is.” And who he is, in her words, is a “misogynistic pig.”

“This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs,” Cheney said, speaking of Vance and Trump as the audience erupted in applause. “I think that will become clear.”

“Look at what J.D. Vance says on almost a daily basis about women; that guy’s got a real women problem,” Cheney added. “I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to psychoanalyze him, and there’s a lot of eyeliner jokes to be made in there …”

Women in this country “have had enough,” said Cheney, who urged Harris to focus on “substance and policy” during ABC’s upcoming debate against the former president, while also getting in a few quips about Vance’s weirdness.*

In the same presser, Cheney shared a shocking piece of news: Her father also plans to vote for Harris this November.

“If you listen to what [Vance] says about women and you look at what Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has done and what he says about women—these are not people we can entrust with power again.”

* This article originally misstated the network on which the debate will air.

Apparently, Donald Trump has gone too far for a former acolyte of unitary executive theory.

During an appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival on Friday, former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney made a startling announcement about her father’s plans for the November election.

“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said, as the crowd erupted into applause.

“My dad believes, and he’s said publicly, that there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is,” she explained. She had formally endorsed Harris during an address at Duke University on Thursday.

Later on Friday, the elder Cheney released a statement confirming that he would vote for Harris in November.

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again,” he said.   

“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The former vice president for George W. Bush had previously criticized Trump, calling him a “coward” in an advertisement for his daughter’s 2022 congressional campaign.

His daughter was one of a small handful of Republicans to openly criticize Trump after the deadly January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. As a result, Trump has suggested she be tried for treason in a “televised military tribunal.”

While in office, Dick Cheney advocated for a catastrophic and unnecessary war, invaded the privacy of millions of Americans, and sought to bolster presidential authority (and immunity). Back then, he propagated his own damage to democracy. Now it seems that Trump offends even his sensibilities.

Liz Cheney didn’t mince words when discussing Trump or his lackluster running mate, J.D. Vance. “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs,” Cheney said, as the audience cheered. She said she remained hopeful that their characters would “become clear” during the upcoming debates.

This story has been updated.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan handed Donald Trump a massive win on Friday, delaying his hush-money sentencing until November 26, after the national election. But news of the reprieve wasn’t enough for Trump, who turned around and distributed a deliberately misleading message to his followers on Truth Social that claimed the trial—in which he had already been found guilty by a jury—amounted to “no case.”

“The Manhattan D.A. Witch Hunt has been postponed because everyone realizes that there was NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!” Trump wrote. “It is a political attack against me by Comrade Kamala Harris and other Radical Left Opponents for purposes of Election Interference, and is a case that should have never been brought. Nothing like this has ever happened in the United States of America—IT IS STRICTLY THIRD WORLD, BANANA REPUBLIC ‘STUFF.’”

Trump then proceeded to name-drop a host of Fox News contributors and legal analysts, including Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz, and Mark Levin, claiming that top attorneys “understand this.”

“I greatly appreciate the words ‘if necessary’ being utilized in the Decision, because there should be no ‘if necessary’—This case should be rightfully terminated, as we prepare for the Most Important Election in the History of our Country,” Trump continued, referring to the final words in the legal order that specified the future sentencing date. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump was found guilty in May of 34 felony charges related to falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree. Trump was accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug before the 2016 presidential election in an effort to skew public opinion.

Donald Trump is trying to appeal a multimillion-dollar judgment against him for defaming writer and author E. Jean Carroll. In a press conference Friday, though, Trump continued to attack her, accusing Carroll of lying.

“I should be suing [E Jean Carroll] for defamation,” Trump said, noting that “this is not the kind of publicity you’d like.”

“She has gone around for years saying this story, and it’s a total lie.… This whole thing started, along with just about every case I’ve been involved with, with the political campaign of Harris, who’s having a bad time,” Trump added.

Trump described Carroll as “a woman I have never met, I don’t know, I have no idea who she is,” before accusing her of making up the sexual assault to promote her book. These were the exact grounds that opened Trump up to the first defamation lawsuit in 2019.

Repeating such a lie probably isn’t the best idea, as Trump already owes Carroll $88.3 million for sexually abusing and defaming her. On Friday, oral arguments began in his appeal against a $5 million defamation judgment, which spurred his press conference rant. Carroll could easily have more legal ammunition from Trump’s press conference alone, where he even accused her of taking her accusations from a Law and Order episode.

It’s a recurring pattern for the former president and convicted felon, who can’t stop complaining about and attacking Carroll despite the legal judgments against him. During Friday’s press conference, Trump even went off on a tangent mentioning other possible sexual assault accusations against him, which probably freaked out his lawyers.

While Trump experienced some good news earlier on Friday when Judge Juan Merchan decided to delay the sentencing in his hush-money trial until after the election, his press conference Friday isn’t likely to help his appeal against Carroll. Maybe he thinks he can keep escaping the consequences of his actions, no matter what he does.

The guy who pushed the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016 and the #StoptheSteal lie in 2020 is a part of the official Republican “protect the vote” initiative—because of course he is.

According to an email shared by HuffPost politics reporter Igor Bobic, RNC’s Election Integrity Department is advertising a webinar with Jack Posobiec to teach Wisconsinites “how YOU can help protect the vote.”

The effort is part of the RNC’s “Protect the Vote” project, a battleground state initiative to recruit and train “thousands of poll watchers” for the November election. But their surrogates are just as sketchy as you might imagine.

Posobiec, whom the RNC calls a “great patriot,” is a political operative who has “collaborated with white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis in his capacity as an operative,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He is probably most remembered for his role in Pizzagate, in which he spread the 2016 conspiracy theory that Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton were running a pedophilic sex dungeon below a D.C. pizza joint. His story led to a gunman opening fire inside the pizzeria.

Two months prior to the 2020 election, he tweeted “StoptheSteal 2020 is coming,” allowing lies about the election to spread before ballots were even cast. More recently, the “social media influencer” has been peddling lies about Ukraine and celebrating what he called the “end of democracy” at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year.

Clearly, this is exactly the kind of person the official Republican Party wants teaching poll watchers how to preserve election integrity.