Dec 11, 2023 3 min read

By Oren Spiegler

Former Wyoming congresswoman and number three Republican House leader Liz Cheney is participating in interviews as her new book, “Oath and Honor,” is released. It is a book that I am anxious to read and that those who wish to be informed should consider acquiring or securing from their local library. It is destined to be a longstanding best-seller.

I watched Cheney’s interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last Monday. There was a great deal to take away from it.

The first half of the program had Maddow laying the groundwork for the interview to follow, emphasizing that she has disagreed with Cheney on virtually every major issue, but that they have now come together to join the fight for our democracy.

Backed up by a mountain of evidence, including text messages and email messages,, the theme of the book is how the Republican Party has dangerously fallen into being subservient to former President Donald Trump, and what this means for the future.

Cheney is unsparing in criticism of her GOP colleagues, portraying many of them as knowing that their support for Trump and his endless efforts to overturn the legitimate result of the 2020 presidential election was based on a lie. She notes that her constituents who watch Fox News Channel, One America Network, and Newsmax came to believe that the January 6, 2021, desecration of the Capitol and assaults on law enforcement officers was primarily peaceful.

She tells of how former Speaker Kevin McCarthy visited Mara-a-Lago in late January 2021 to mend fences with Trump after initially blaming him for the attack. She said this happened solely because McCarthy’s ability to raise money had dried up due to his brief flirtation with the truth.

Cheney tells of how she had been a friend of now-House Speaker Mike Johnson, that her office was next to his, and that she had considered him to be a man of principle until he became intimately involved in the election denial movement, knowing that what he was trying to do was not within the bounds of the law or the Constitution. She alleges that Mike Kelly, Republican House member from Butler County, had told her that her outspokenness about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election was like finding out in a sport that your girlfriend was playing for the opposing team.

When asked by Maddow how she would react if Trump were to become president again, Cheney declined to answer, stating that it is not something she can bring herself to consider.

At the conclusion of the book, Cheney warns that if Trump does become the president on January 20, 2025, the democratic presidential election of 2024 may be our last. Anyone who doubts the accuracy of that assertion should listen to Trump’s own words as he has promised to use the presidency to get revenge, to persecute and imprison political opponents.

Cheney was replaced in the House by Harriet Hageman, a liar who was able to con a large majority of Trump-friendly Wyoming voters into believing the falsehoods about the 2020 election. Cheney was willing to lose her seat and the power she had acquired as a rising star in order to stand for the truth.

All that we have to do is to vote and to spread the word about the calamity that lurks if we sit out next year’s election or vote for a would-be autocrat who would finish the job of destroying the country, its institutions, and its democratic system of governance.

Oren Spiegler is a Peters resident.