Former President Donald Trump on Monday issued a second endorsement of New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to replace Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney as House Republican Conference chair with a vote expected this week.
“The House GOP has a massive opportunity to upgrade this week from warmonger Liz Cheney to gifted communicator Elise Stefanik,” Trump wrote in a nod to Stefanik’s defense of the president throughout his two impeachments. Cheney was one of 10 House GOP lawmakers to support the second.
Trump continued, touting Stefanik’s conservative credentials despite her more moderate lower-chamber voting record.
Elise has the intelligence, an endorsement from American Patriot Brandon Judd and the National Border Patrol Council, she has an A+ from the NRA, and she loves our Veterans. We need someone in Leadership who has experience flipping districts from Blue to Red as we approach the important 2022 midterms, and that’s Elise! She knows how to win, which is what we need!
Cheney’s lackluster performance in campaign recruitment and fundraising in the November cycle, in which Republicans flipped 15 seats in spite of projections for a net loss, put the Wyoming lawmaker in even starker contrast to Stefanik, a prolific fundraiser with a track record of finding successful candidates to run in competitive races.
The second referendum on Cheney’s role as No. 3 in leadership comes three months after she handily survived the first with the support of the party’s top brass.
Since she maintained grip on power in leadership, an emboldened Cheney has continued to undermine the conference she leads, picking up every opportunity to spar with Trump and engineer a GOP civil war for which the party holds little appetite outside the Acela Corridor. In consistent fashion, Cheney, who amplified the fake Russian bounties story of last summer, has wielded progressive talking points to cast the current party as infected with white supremacy and escalated her public feud with the former Republican president.
Now she’s “lost confidence” from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy while the party’s No. 2, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, endorsed Stefanik over Cheney last week.
