As the Media Research Center did, Newsmax helped Donald Trump be angry that Liz Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for president. In a June 9 article, Eric Mack went the revisionist route on bashing Cheney’s criticism of Trump’s non-response to the Capitol riot:
In her opening remarks Thursday night, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., claimed then-President Donald Trump “did not condemn the attack,” but he in fact did in a video Twitter quickly blocked, along with an Oval Office address a week later.
Also, Cheney used Trump’s words of “love in the air,” as the House Jan. 6 Select Committee showed protesters breaching the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, but those words were taken out of context, because they were made about the Stop the Steal rally, and not aimed at those breaching the Capitol during the joint session of Congress.
But in the first video Mack referenced, Trump repeated his lie that he won the 2020 election and merely told rioters and that “respect our great people in law and order” and “you have to go home now.” The second video was mostly about trying to distance himself from the violence he incited, only at the end saying, “Those who engage in the attacks last week, will be brought to justice.” In neither video did Trump actually criticize the rioters.
After Cheney endorsed Harris, James Morley III reported on the development in a Sept. 4 article headlined “No Surprise,” huffing that “Cheney has been a dogged Trump critic over the last three years, particularly after being hand-picked by then Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi to be one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 Committee that investigated the riots at the Capitol in 2021.” Mack let Trump rage about it in a Sept. 7 article:
Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., announced this week that they will vote for Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, but Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called them “irrelevant RINOs” (Republicans in name only) and said their anti-Trump politics should be dismissed, if not “prosecuted.”
“Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races!” Trump wrote Friday night on Truth Social. “They couldn’t get Scooter Libby, who did so much for them (but was so unfairly treated!), PARDONED. I did it!
“He’s the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris.”
NIck Koutsobinas touted the Trump campaign taking a shot at her in an Oct. 21 article:
The Trump campaign took a jab at Vice President Kamala Harris’ spokesman, Ian Sams, in a press release on Monday after he criticized former Vice President Dick Cheney’s role in getting his daughter, Liz Cheney, into a special State Department position that allowed the Bush administration to pursue its war in Iraq under false pretenses.
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” the campaign quipped on Monday. “And a Kamala Harris spokesman is right once in his life.”
The statement referenced a tweet of Sams from 2019, where he wrote, “Liz Cheney helped lead us into Iraq from a special State Department Middle East post her dad’s administration created for her.”
The next day, the apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy gave space to the man himself:
The former president took to his social media platform to lambaste Harris and the Cheneys.
“Lyin’ Kamala has stooped so low as to pick a woman to campaign with her who lost her Congressional Race by the largest margin, 40%, in history. The record holder is Crazed Warhawk Liz Cheney, whose father, Dick, convinced Bush to go into the Middle East and KILL. Now Kamala wants Arabs to vote for her? I don’t think so!” Trump posted on Truth Social in Tuesday’s early hours.
When Trump used violent language toward Cheney, saying “Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Newsmax first left it to a wire article. That was followed by another wire article noting that “Arizona’s top prosecutor, a Democrat, said on Friday that her office was investigating whether Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump violated state law for suggesting a prominent critic should face gunfire in combat.” As it became clear that his words would be an issue, that was followed by right-wing talking heads defending Trump and insisting he wasn’t actually advocating violence:
- Karoline Leavitt to Newsmax: Liz Cheney Outrage a ‘Hoax’
- Shaffer to Newsmax: Trump Criticizes Liz Cheney, ‘They Go Nuts’
- Trump Camp: Even ‘Leftists’ Debunk Cheney Comment Row
After the election, a Nov. 11 article by Nicole Weatherholtz touted Trump’s victory lap on this and how he “took to Truth Social to skewer the Democrats for bringing the Cheneys into Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House.”