Former George W. Bush Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't have the most sympathetic reputation among his critics. On Jan. 6, however, his daughter described him as a father terrified for her safety.
According to former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), her father sounded the alarm during Donald Trump's speech.
“Are you listening to Trump?” Cheney asked when calling his daughter. “He just told the crowd they should ‘get rid of the Liz Cheneys of the world.’ He has created a serious threat to your security. You are in danger. You need to be aware of that as you think about whether to go forward with your remarks.”
Liz Cheney had prepared a statement voicing her opposition to the members of her party who wanted to overthrow the 2020 election result. The elder Cheney served as the Secretary of Defense for three years in the early 1990s and knew a thing or two about terrorism.
"My dad’s voice was steady — and deadly serious. I knew he was angry and worried as a father, and I knew that his heart was breaking for our country," the younger Cheney writes in her book. "The president of the United States was attempting to utilize an angry crowd as a weapon to threaten Congress, to prevent us from carrying out our constitutional duty.
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"My father knew immediately and unequivocally that Trump’s speech was likely to cause violence. And now Trump had targeted me directly," she continued. "I listened to what my dad was saying, but I think we both knew what the answer had to be. There was no world in which I would let Donald Trump threaten or bully me into abandoning my duty."
He asked that she call after she made the speech. It never happened. Instead, members hid behind their desks as rioters tried to get into the chamber, terrified before finally being rushed to a safe room.
The former vice president began to fear "that the Capitol Police were losing control." So, he called his daughter's chief of staff.
“You need to go get Liz,” Dick said. “She isn’t safe."
A retired agent was doing her security that day and they tried to evacuate her. "But it was already too late. The Capitol had been breached," she wrote.
Raw Story has full coverage of Liz Cheney's book here.