U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) reportedly “agreed to disagree” over whether former president Donald Trump is a threat to democracy after the two Republican leaders engaged in a tense text exchange last week.
Johnson recently told Axios in an exclusive interview that he reached out to Cheney after she doubted whether he would carry out his “constitutional obligations” to certify election results if Vice President Kamala Harris wins her bid.
The House Speaker said the two had not spoken in a “very long time,” but he decided to reach out to her after “she said some very uncharitable things.”
He also shared “how disappointed I was in that, to make things personal, because I’ve not done that,… We had a little debate in conversation, on text message, back and forth and agreed to disagree.”
Cheney, however, recalls the conversation vastly different, telling the outlet she and the speaker “used to be friends, but we did not ‘agree to disagree.'”
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has made headlines recently for temporarily crossing party lines and showing her support for Harris, even appearing on campaign rallies with the Democratic candidate, as well as denouncing Trump as a threat to democracy.
The former Rep. was asked in an interview in mid-October with NBC News’ Kristen Welker whether she believed the elections would be certified. She responded she has “faith that this election will be free and fair and that there will be a peaceful transfer of power,” however, she does “not have faith that Mike Johnson will fulfill his constitutional obligations.
“And if you just look at what he did in 2020, he knew— and he knew with specificity— that the claims of fraud that Donald Trump was making and that he was repeating, he knew those to be false,” the Wyoming Republican said. “We had very clear and specific conversations about that. He knew that courts had specifically found that those claims were false. He knew they weren’t true.”
Cheney became an avid Trump critic after the Jan. 6, 2021 riots in the U.S. Capitol. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president in the wake of the riots.
Since her claims, Johnson has said that accusations that he won’t carry out election certifications are “dishonest.”
“You know the idea that President Trump is somehow a danger to the Republic, and that any of us who support him are a danger or would not fulfill our constitutional obligations, all these things that have been said are, it’s just nonsense,” Johnson told Axios.
“She knows, she knows me. She used to know me well and knows that I’m a constitutional conservative, and I take all matters at this level very seriously, and I will fulfill my constitutional oath. And to say otherwise is just dishonest,” he continued.
