Former Rep. Liz Cheney made it her mission to take down former and potentially future President Donald Trump, so much so that she let it become an obsession that distracted from other work. She not only lost her role as House Conference Chair in May 2021, she went on to lose her primary last August to her successor, current Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) by nearly 40 points. Cheney is back, though, as her group, the Great Task PAC released a 60-second ad in New Hampshire against Trump.
New to NBC: Liz Cheney is going on the TV airwaves today in NH with her first ad of the 2024 cycle, calling out the “risk” of a second Trump presidency.
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) May 9, 2023
She is never seen on camera over the 60 seconds — only Trump & J6 insurrection footage. https://t.co/0PzhDm62Yo https://t.co/JQmmyObrLE pic.twitter.com/MBhZrZAlq5
Although Cheney narrates the ad, she does not appear in it. Rather, the ad focuses on footage from January 6, 2021. "Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again," she warns, also claiming "Donald Trump is the only president in American history who has refused to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power" and even that "there has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president."
In covering the ad, Twitchy's Sam Janney highlighted a very telling point about Cheney, in that she should be spending this much energy on defeating Democrats. "Now, imagine if Liz cared this much about stopping Biden. Wouldn’t that be AMAZING? And I get it, it’s basically primary season (I’m not sure we’re ever really out of primary season anymore) and Republicans will make digs at one another because they want the nod, BUT this is dangerous because Liz cares more about 'getting' Trump than she does stopping Biden," she wrote.
A report from The Washington Post also mentioned that the ad will play on CNN before and during the outlet hosts a town hall with Trump in New Hampshire.
Trump won the New Hampshire primary in 2016 with 35.23 percent of the vote, and only lost the general election that year by 0.3 percent.
Hageman responded to the ad on Tuesday morning with a tweet that predicted New Hampshire voters will reject "the idea that a woman from Virginia could tell us what we should think," just as they did in Wyoming.
The congresswoman also noted that Cheney's "personal vendetta against President Trump knows no bounds, and she’s proven it once again with this ad. She’s taking the donations she’s gotten from Democrats and throwing them away on ineffective TV ads to settle a personal score. She might as well be setting the money on fire, because it won’t work, just like all her other attempts to silence President Trump."
There is one person who Republican voters wish would go away, and it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Liz Cheney. In Wyoming, we rejected the idea that a woman from Virginia could tell us what we should think, and the voters of New Hampshire will do that too. Her personal vendetta…
— Harriet Hageman (@HagemanforWY) May 9, 2023
"Liz Cheney" has been trending on Twitter in response to the ad. Cheney herself may end up running for president, something she teased not long after losing her primary, and before then, several months before, in fact. Polls currently show her with support in the single digits, while Trump is leading the pack in the Republican primary.
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