Liz Cheney has a dire outlook for the GOP if Donald Trump were to run for president and win the party’s nomination in 2024.
The conservative Wyoming congresswoman says the divides in her party are too deep to endure another run by the ex-president. Speaking on Meet the Press this past Sunday, she warned that they would be stressed to their breaking points should he do so.
“The party has either to come back from where we are right now, which is a very dangerous and toxic place, or the party will splinter and there will be a new conservative party that rises,” she told host Chuck Todd.
Were Mr Trump to successfully win the nomination, the party would “shatter”, she added.
The congresswoman has already pledged that she will no longer be a Republican if Donald Trump is her party’s nominee in 2024. On Sunday, she reiterated that any Republican who embraces Mr Trump’s lies and conspiracies about the 2020 election is not worth voting for.
Her words have hinted at the possibility of an independent conservative run, or even an effort to establish a new conservative political party should Mr Trump retain his dominance over the party.
Mr Trump remains the wide favourite to clinch the 2024 GOP nomination, according to all available polling. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is the only nationally-prominent GOP figure to poll double digits against the former president in hypothetical matchups, and even he trails Mr Trump by a significant margin.
His continued control over the party comes as he remains under criminal investigation for the retention of presidential records illegally from the White House, and the Justice Department continues to run its own grand jury probe into January 6.
