Liz Cheney Says Mom’s Friend Was So Devoted to Donald Trump She ‘Threw Away’ a Six-Decade Friendship

For people in former congresswoman Liz Cheney’s orbit, politics was personal — so much so that one of her mother’s dear friends left a decades-long sorority because of their conflicting views on Donald Trump.

“In the book, I’m talking about one of my mother’s oldest friends, someone she’s been friends with since they went to Girls State in Wyoming together in the 1950s,” Cheney, 57, tells PEOPLE about her new memoir. Oath and honor.

According to the Wyoming Republican, the family friend “fell so much in love” with Trump that — when the Cheneys became outspoken critics of his election denial — she “basically just threw away a friendship of over 60 years,” prioritizing her loyalty to Trump over her personal relationship. .

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“Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney.

Cheney — the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and former second lady Lynne Cheney, both 82 — once chaired the House Republican Conference, the third-highest House GOP leadership position.

But after the 2020 presidential election, she resigned from her party to urge Trump to respect the electoral process, and would later participate in a House investigation into the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol, when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to thwart the certification of the election. .

Those decisions — plus her vote to impeach Trump — would cost her a seat in Congress if she loses re-election to a pro-Trump candidate in 2022.

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Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney delivers a concession speech after losing re-election in 2022 Alex Wong/Getty

Speaking with PEOPLE, Cheney admits the decision to vote for Trump’s second impeachment was met with skepticism from her fellow Republicans.

“When there was a vote to impeach Donald Trump, there were people who said to me, ‘How can you impeach the president of your own party? How can you vote to impeach the president when 70% of the people in the state I represented, Wyoming, voted for him on elections?’ ”

“It was so clear to me that your oath and your duty to the Constitution must come before any partisan politics, but it turns out that few people feel that way,” she continued.

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Liz Cheney, who served as Wyoming’s sole representative from 2017 to 2023 Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty

Cheney worked for the State Department before launching an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2014. Then in 2016, she launched another campaign, this time for the House of Representatives, where she was elected with more than 60% of the vote.

However, by November 2021, the tide had turned. Republicans in Wyoming voted to strip Cheney of her party affiliation after her attempts to hold the former president accountable, and she finds herself in an uphill battle for re-election in 2022.

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Still, she had some in her corner, including her father. “He was absolutely persistent,” Cheney told PEOPLE of the former vice president. “And I think that also gave me a lot of strength. Obviously, I’ve been a member of the Republican Party for decades, he’s been even longer. His advice, his thoughts, his views on what’s needed at this time have certainly given me strength and been he sets an example for me.”

Of her book, Cheney says it offers her a way to tell her side of the story now that she’s no longer in office. “I felt it was very important for people to know what happened in the halls of Congress. It’s a cautionary tale.”

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Source: HIS Education