“Defeat Liz Cheney in the upcoming election, and Wyoming will bring Washington to its knees,” he told a group of hundreds of spectators, many of whom were not wearing masks. “How can you call yourself a representative if you do not represent the will of the people? That is what all the neocons are asking about the Arab dictators. I think maybe we should ask the same question of a bureaucrat who is on a fake cow ” supports an accusation that is deeply unpopular in the state of Wyoming. ‘
Gaetz reveals his intention to fight Cheney after she and nine other Republicans from the House voted to accuse Trump of inciting an uprising on the Capitol. The measure was the most twofold accusation in American history. But the fight against a president who has become an exciting figure for his party has sparked vitriolism, with the call for Cheney to be expelled from her leadership position under the right flank of the caucus.
But the discussion of accusation made just a dazzling appearance in Gaetz’s rally on Thursday. The congressman mostly chose to portray Cheney as collaborating with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrats, such as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to maintain a status quo at the expense of Main Street America for Washington work. He accuses Cheney of not being in touch with the cowboy values of her home state of Wyoming, calling himself a proponent of ‘prairie populism’.
“The truth is that the establishment in both political parties has teamed up to screw our fellow Americans for generations,” Gaetz said. “The private insider club of Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney, they want to bring our government back to the default setting: they enrich.”
The allegation that Cheney and her Democratic counterparts are fighting for the same team was in contrast to the congresswoman’s simultaneous launch Thursday of legislation challenging Biden’s recent executive order on energy production.
Gaetz also attacked Cheney for the role her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, played in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He derogatoryly called Liz Cheney a “neocon” and said he advocated unnecessary wars in the Middle East.
“The neocons say we have to fight them abroad so we don’t have to fight at home,” Gaetz said. “I would say maybe we should fight the neocons at home so we do not have to fight in Washington, DC. But that’s a problem because the neocons are at home in Washington, DC.
“The real cowboys, I think, fought the Indians so they could use the land, but what are American soldiers fighting for even what Liz Cheney is sending around the world for?” he added. “Places most Americans could not even point to on a map.”
Much of the event follows on Trump’s rally book, with discussion points reflecting the former president’s bombastic comments. Trump regularly expressed his contempt for Cheney while he was president, and shortly before his supporters told supporters on January 6, “We need to get rid of the weak members of Congress, those who are not good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. ‘
At one point, Gaetz even repeated Trump’s contempt for developing countries in a dig at Congress, saying: ‘A nation that sends its best to fight in the worst countries in the world should not send the worst to be his representatives in the US Congress. “
Cheney’s team largely scrapped Gaetz’s attacks, and one member of her office told CNN this week, “Rep. Gaetz can leave his beauty bag at home. In Wyoming, the men do not wear makeup.” (The digging is a clear reference to Gaetz’s use of makeup in an HBO documentary about his tenure).
Former Wyoming representative Amy Edmonds put it equally straightforward in a statement to POLITICO on Thursday: “Wyoming does not like it when outsiders come into our state and try to tell us what to do.”