What she said...
July 16, 2026
Women’s Day protest in Spokane’s Riverfront Park, May 1, 2025
An adults-only quotation for a shameful betrayal
The Republican Party’s cult-like permission structure—to rescue America from democracy—has roots in the post-Watergate period.
That’s a tad ironic. What history tells us about Richard Nixon and Watergate is that senior members of the Republican Party did what today’s Republican leaders absolutely refuse to do—they put their loyalty to the Constitution ahead of their loyalty to a Republican president. On August 7, 1974 a Republican delegation of senior Congressional leaders, led by Sen. Barry Goldwater confronted the 37th president with the news that he could not count on them to save him from being impeached and convicted by the Senate. Nixon announced his resignation that next day. In a pinch, Goldwater & Co. had chosen country over party.
Not so Roger Ailes, a man whose mission was to re-educate Americans about the depth of their grievances and a menagerie of scapegoats.
Ailes was never elected to anything. But he was a rising star in the Nixon White House as a then-young (28 years old) media-savvy advisor in charge of Nixon’s television appearances. Ailes was convinced Nixon could have survived Watergate were it not for the major TV news networks. So Ailes set his sights on changing that, eventually finding his niché when the Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch enlisted him to become the chief executive to launch Fox News in 1996.
Ailes held that position for two decades.
When it became clear Roger Ailes would be fired from Fox for using his position to sexually harass women employees at Fox, Trump defended him—“I think it’s so sad. He’s such a great guy.”
If it wasn’t clear before, it became clear after the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that Fox News is the unofficial organ of the Republican Party—which is precisely what Ailes intended.
In a sense, Fox over-performed as a propaganda outlet for Republicans in general and Trump in particular. When Trump began pushing false claims about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him—Fox News hosts aired those allegations even though the network’s executives, including its founder, knew the charges were baseless.
Why? Because—as internal emails and deposition testimony would reveal—Fox executives were concerned about losing audience share if they didn’t feed their viewers the conspiracy allegations that Trump & Co. were pushing and continue to push to this day. The decision to air the false stories ultimately cost Fox $787 million to settle a defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. A similar defamation case brought by Smartmatic (another voting machine supplier) is still pending.
Spokane’s legendary “Pjammers” assembling at a recent “No Kings” rally in north Spokane
The myth of the “steal” has since metastasized. It’s no longer just a claim (like “crooked” Hillary Clinton) but a point of entry and badge of solidarity for today’s Republicans. (Witness the reluctance, yesterday, of Jay Clayton—Trump’s nominee to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence—to admit Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
All too often the conversation about the bad faith election fraud claims stops half way. It trails off without connecting the bogus “rigged elections” charges to the other elements of Trumpian ambitions to empower white Americans (and white immigrants) while shutting the welcome gate for people of color, women, and transgender persons. It trails off without connecting the rigged election lies to the shocking level of corruption and self-enrichment Trump and his family have garnered. It trails off without connection to the broad executive immunity the Republican-packed Supreme Court dished out in Trump v. USA. It also frequently omits the evisceration of independence the Department of Justice has traditionally been accorded, and countless other initiatives to crater what we’ve long regarded as the courtyards of democracy: the assault on voting rights, birthright citizenship that has to be added to the Trumpian rejection of civil rights, environmental protection and a science-based public health system.
It’s not a movement so much as it is an intoxicated parade promoting authoritarian power.
Liz Cheney un-endorsing former President Donald Trump in October of 2024
Liz Cheney’s story proves it
There was a time, pre-Donald Trump, that the state of Wyoming was essentially the state of Cheney, given that Dick Cheney, one of the state’s favorite sons—was Liz Cheney’s father. The federal building in Casper is named after him.
When Liz Cheney was elected to Congress from Wyoming in 2018, she won with more than twice the number of votes as her Democrat challenger. After denouncing the 2021 insurrection and serving as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional committee to investigate the insurrection, Cheney lost her Republican primary by a landslide, with less than 50,000 votes to the 113,000-plus votes received by her Republican successor.
The only one of her positions that had changed was her alliance with Trump, whom she came to view as a threat not just to her party but to the country. The same had been true of former Trump Attorney General William Barr, even before 1/06/21. It was Barr who’d held favor with Trump until December of 2020. That was when Barr bluntly informed Trump that his claims the 2020 election was stolen from him were “bullshit.” Barr resigned shortly afterwards. And Trump continued to pour gasoline on the flames of the bogus stolen election claims.
When that mischief exploded into the insurrection at the Capitol on 1/6/21, and a sudden warning came to evacuate the House chamber ahead of rioters who’d stormed the building. Rep. Jim Jordan, a prominent Trump ally from Ohio, approached Cheney.
Cheney’s account:
“He [Jordan] came over to me and basically said, ‘We need to get the ladies away from the aisle’. I had watched for the months since the election what was going on, and the lies that had been told to people. It was both that I certainly didn’t need his help, and secondly I thought clearly that the lie they had been spreading and telling people had absolutely contributed to what we were living through at that moment.”
She later confirmed her angry response to Jordan—“get away from me! you fucking did this!”
The depth of the raw betrayal Cheney experienced is recorded. But it is nowhere near reconciled, let alone acknowledged by Trump’s remaining core supporters. Jordan is certainly one of them. History will record that even after the chamber was cleared and the Vice President came out of hiding to officiate the certification of the election, Jordan and other Trump allies still sought to avoid the certification of Joe Biden’s election. Jordan is also one of five Republican leaders who defied subpoenas to testify before the Jan. 6th select committee on which Cheney was the vice chair. Of course, the record also shows that as soon as Trump regained the White House in January 2024 he pardoned all of the Jan. 6th insurrectionists, including those convicted or having plead guilty to violent attacks on police officers.
The myth of the “steal” has since metastasized. It’s no longer just a claim (like “crooked” Hillary Clinton) but a point of entry and badge of solidarity for today’s Republicans.
There is an unmistakable surreality to this: a nation that still has vestigial instincts toward democracy but is now teetering under the leadership of a corrupt demagogue—an unabashed authoritarian leader serviced by sycophants and Congressional enablers. Trump is scheduled to give a speech tonight, to once again assert that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
He couldn’t care less about what is being stolen from us.
But Liz Cheney won’t forget. And neither should we.
—tjc
