May 4, 2021

McCarthy Makes It Clear: Embrace Trump’s Election Lies or Get Kicked Out of Leadership

Liz Cheney, after tweeting the simple truth about the election, looks increasingly abandoned by the GOP.

Tom Williams/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Rep. Liz Cheney’s refusal to go along with the GOP’s increasing embrace of Donald Trump’s lie, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, appears to have reached a crisis point for the third-ranking House Republican.

“I have heard from members, concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Fox News Tuesday. “We all need to be working as one if we’re able to win the majority.” The remarks come on the heels of a tweet from Cheney, in which the Wyoming congresswoman unequivocally pushed back on a statement Trump had issued earlier on Monday falsely calling Joe Biden’s victory “THE BIG LIE.”

But by simply telling the truth, as Cheney did with her tweet, she has since set off a firestorm of outrage among her Republican colleagues, many of whom are now clamoring for her removal as Republican conference chair. The tensions spilled into a closed-door meeting later on Monday, where Cheney once again warned Republicans not to accept Trump’s falsehoods about the election, nor should they “whitewash” the events of the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection. “It’s a poison in the bloodstream of our democracy,” Cheney said referring to Trump’s lies, according to sources in the room who spoke to CNN.

“We can’t whitewash what happened on January 6 or perpetuate Trump’s big lie,” she continued. “It is a threat to democracy. What he did on January 6 is a line that cannot be crossed.”

What’s notable now is that Cheney’s position has not changed; she’s simply repeating her stance on Trump’s actions in the Capitol insurrection. Instead, it’s the note of reproval in McCarthy’s newest comments that signals that Republicans, in the months since January 6, have grown comfortable in openly supporting Trump’s blatant lies. Where once McCarthy had stood by Cheney, thereby saving her from a party vote to remove her from the leadership team, he now appears to have had enough of the truth.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate