Liz Cheney warns 'co-opted' GOP would help Trump 'end the republic'

One of the featured guests on tomorrow's CBS Sunday Morning is former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), whose forthcoming book not only excoriates former President Donald Trump, but her fellow Republicans as well.

During the interview, CBS' John Dickerson asked Cheney if she stood by her claim that Trump winning a second term in the White House would signal "the end of the republic." Cheney nodded, and said that the once-reliable institutions meant to curb executive overreach would no longer apply if Trump was voted back into the presidency.

"[Trump has] told us what he will do. It's very easy to see the steps that he will take," Cheney said. "People who say, 'well, if he's elected, it's not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,' don't fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted."

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"One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States," she added.

The former Wyoming congresswoman isn't alone in her assessment of how Trump might govern in a second term. A recent essay published by Washington Post contributing editor Robert Kagan warned that America was on a "path to dictatorship" given the ex-president's domination of the Republican presidential primary and what he characterized as the justice system's "impotent" response to Trump's actions.

Cheney has written a book, Oath & Honor, documenting her time as the vice chair of the House Select Committee on January 6, in which she helped oversee the congressional investigation into the events surrounding the day Trump supporters ransacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Cheney — the former chair of the House Republican Conference whom FiveThirtyEight found voted in line with the former president's policies almost 93% of the time — was voted out of office in the 2022 Republican primary despite serving three terms, losing to a Trump-endorsed candidate by more than 35 points.

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