Pelosi, stressing that Trump incited the violence, called for his impeachment — and Cheney was among the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for incitement to insurrection. Cheney, acknowledging Biden as president-elect, called Trump out in no uncertain terms.
In an official statement on January 12, Cheney announced that she would be voting to impeach Trump and declared, "This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our republic…. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution."
The backlash against Cheney by pro-Trump Republicans has been intense. In Wyoming, State Sen. Anthony Bouchard — a far-right wingnut, Trump supporter and the founder of the group Wyoming Gun Owners — has announced that he will be challenging Cheney in a GOP congressional primary in 2022. Bouchard, an outspoken supporter of pro-QAnon extremists like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, considers Cheney a "turncoat" for voting to impeach Trump.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida is among the far-right Republicans who is hoping to see Cheney voted out of the House and replaced by someone who is even further to the right. On January 27, Gaetz spoke at an anti-Cheney rally in Wyoming and told the crowd, "Defeat Liz Cheney in this upcoming election, and Wyoming will bring Washington to its knees." Gaetz described Cheney as a "beltway bureaucrat turned fake cowgirl that supported an impeachment that is deeply unpopular in the state of Wyoming."
GOP activist Donald Trump, Jr. called into the rally, voicing his desire to see Cheney voted out of office in 2022. And on Twitter, the former president's son tweeted, "It's time to get this RINO out of GOP leadership."
Former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski, journalist Lachlan Markay reports in Axios, has been fundraising against Cheney via his political action committee Fight Back Now America. In a text, Lewandowski stressed that Cheney "must be removed from GOP leadership and primaried" and wrote, "I launched Fight Back Now America for reasons like this. We must hold spineless Republicans in Washington — like Liz — accountable! Donate to defeat her."
Former President Trump himself, according to CNN, wants Cheney to pay a price politically for voting to impeach him. On January 29, CNN's Michael Warren reported, "Trump has repeatedly questioned his Republican allies about efforts to remove Cheney from her leadership position and run a primary candidate against her. He has also been showing those allies a poll commissioned by his Save America PAC that purports to show that Cheney's impeachment vote has damaged her standing in Wyoming, even urging them to talk about the poll on television."
The anti-Cheney movement speaks volumes about the state of the Republican Party in 2021. Even someone as arch-conservative as Dick Cheney's daughter is now considered too liberal by many Republicans. Considering incitement of violent insurrection an impeachable offense is now problematic in some GOP circles. And the more that Trump, Jr., Gaetz, Lewandowski and others rail against Cheney, the more they show how dangerously extreme their party has become.