Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has launched a campaign ad in New Hampshire warning 2024 voters against backing former President Trump.
“Donald Trump has proven he is unfit for office. Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again,” Cheney says in a voiceover atop clips of Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Cheney, who was on the House select committee that probed Jan. 6, knocked Trump for his actions around the 2020 election, which he lost to now-President Biden.
“Donald Trump is the only president in American history who has refused to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power. He lost the election, and he knew it. He betrayed millions of Americans by telling them the election was stolen. He ignored the rulings of dozens of courts,” she says in the video.
“Rather than accept his defeat, he mobilized a mob to come to Washington and march on the Capitol. Then, he watched on television while the mob attacked law enforcement, invaded the Capitol and hunted the vice president,” Cheney says.
NBC News reports that the ad, titled “Risk” and released by her PAC The Great Task, will air in New Hampshire around Trump’s planned on-air town hall Wednesday.
Cheney also highlighted Trump’s delay in telling the rioters to leave, asserting that Trump “didn’t care” about warnings that his Jan. 6 plans were illegal. “There has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president,” she says.
After last year’s midterms, Trump announced that he’s running to reclaim the White House in 2024, and Cheney fueled speculation in late 2022 that she could get in the ring but is yet to officially make an announcement.
She was ousted from her leadership post as the No. 3 Republican in the House after denying Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud. She was later defeated in the primary of her reelection bid last year by Trump-backed challenger, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.).
Hageman said Tuesday that, “there is one person who Republican voters wish would go away, and it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Liz Cheney.” She also accused Cheney of a “personal vendetta” against Trump and of launching “ineffective TV ads to settle a personal score.”
Updated at 9:59 a.m.