Former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY-at large) and former MSNBC contributor Jon Meacham warned their audience at Vanderbilt University of increasing support for former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
During the public conversation on January 6, titled “Defending Our Democracy,” Meacham and Cheney agreed that “Trumpism” is a cult and suggested the country may have to be recovered by “great violence and upheaval.”
Meacham, who said he is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, said that the Republican Party is “in flight from reason” while the Democratic Party is not yet “crazy” or “illiberal.”
“I think that’s exactly right,” Cheney said. “You cannot be both for Donald Trump and the Constitution.”
Meacham voiced the same sentiment, wondering aloud why people who support the Constitution will not vote for President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
“And I don’t have a partisan enough brain, I don’t quite get that,” Meacham continued.
Cheney, who served as the vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, also discussed her experience from that day. She implied Trump told his supporters to harm her during his speech that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Cheney’s father, who informed her of Trump’s remarks, believed she was “in danger,” Cheney said.
In his speech, however, Trump referenced Cheney once and appeared to urge his supporters not to reelect her to Congress, not to harm her.
“And we got to remember, in a year from now, you’re going to start working on Congress and we got to get rid of the weak Congress, people, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world,” Trump said in his speech on January 6, 2021, according to a transcript published by The Associated Press.
Cheney compared the events of January 6, 2021, with the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001, recalling a similarity between the evacuation of former Vice President Mike Pence and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. She prefaced her comparison by saying she would not compare the two events.
Cheney said she was also reminded of a speech former President George Bush delivered the night of September 11, 2001, where Bush said, “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America,” according to the White House’s transcript of the speech.
“And if you think about what Donald Trump did… that is a direct attack or a direct assault on the foundations of the republic,” Cheney continued. “And I think that there’s just no question about the significance of the threat.”
The two did not take questions from the audience, though The Tennessee Star prepared the following question for Meacham and Cheney: “If the focus of this event is the preservation of unity and democracy, why do you two repeatedly demonize the half of the country that supports former President Donald Trump?”
The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, an initiative co-chaired by Meacham that facilitates live speaker events and publishes personal essays, cosponsored the event.
Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt, was a regular paid contributor for MSNBC before the network cut ties with him following a report that he simultaneously helped write speeches for President Biden.
Vanderbilt also employed Meacham at the time but has yet to comment on his actions.
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Matthew Giffin is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Matthew on X / Twitter.
Image “Former Rep. Liz Cheney” by Liz Cheney.
what a clown