In comments posted this Monday to X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter, ex-GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming declared both Donald Trump and his Senate ally J.D. Vance unfit for government service. Vance is an Ohio Republican first elected to his present role in 2022, aligning himself closely and prominently with the ex-president along the way.
“Yesterday, @JDVance1 claimed that Trump could defy rulings of the Supreme Court as President. Vance also admitted he would have done what VP Pence refused to do on January 6th—help Trump illegally seize power. That’s tyranny. Neither Trump nor Vance is fit to serve,” Cheney wrote online.
Vance’s comments were in an interview on ABC with host George Stephanopoulos. Vance presented a hypothetical to make his point on a president’s supposed relationship with the Supreme Court. If “the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling,” the Ohioan claimed.
And on the subject of the 2020 presidential election, which no real-world evidence has ever shown was systematically marred by fraud, Vance said he’d have pushed state legislators to get behind alternate slates of electors — an idea incessantly promoted in Trump’s circles (and partially executed) after the race. “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance said.
Exemplifying the legal problems with this approach, individuals involved in sham elector efforts aligned with Trump have already been criminally charged in three states, a list of defendants including even the current chairman of the state Republican Party in Nevada. Elsewhere, a lawyer who falsely characterized the electors as at least somewhat legitimized in the context of litigation spearheaded by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is facing a professional misconduct case that could result in consequences like disbarment.
