Among Liz Cheney’s many admirers, there’s an anxious hope that the archconservative congresswoman turned anti-Trump crusader will play an outsized role in stopping the former president from returning to the White House in 2024.
But those fans might be anxious for Cheney to do something else first: rule out running for the presidency herself.
In interviews for the promotion of her new book—a memoir that doubles as a case against Trump—Cheney has left the door open for a possible third-party presidential campaign while insisting she “won’t do anything” that would help Trump, as she said on CBS last week.
“I think that the situation that we’re in is so grave, and the politics of the moment require independents and Republicans and Democrats coming together in a way that can help form a new coalition, so that may well be a third-party option,” Cheney told USA TODAY recently.
Few, if any, political figures would be as well-positioned as Cheney to assemble such a coalition. But at this point, most politicians and strategists don’t see how a Cheney ticket would do anything other than siphon independent and right-leaning voters from President Joe Biden—voters Biden badly needs to defeat Trump.
“I don't think a third-party candidate by a Republican will do anything other than to help President Trump,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), a fellow anti-Trump conservative, told The Daily Beast in a brief interview.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Cheney’s close colleague on the House select committee to investigate Jan. 6, told The Daily Beast he’d be “concerned about any third party candidates that, while attempting to prevent Donald Trump from taking office, might risk improving his chances.”
This assessment seems so obvious to Cheney’s allies that they believe there’s very little chance she takes any real step toward a presidential campaign.
“I'd be very surprised if she were to get in, because she's a brilliant politician and tactician, as is her family, and she would not want to be a spoiler that helps elect Donald Trump,” Romney said.
A spokesman for Cheney declined to comment.
There are plenty of reasons Cheney might want to keep a presidential campaign on the table, at least right now. For one, many politicians of her status are generally loath to foreclose their options themselves. For another, any presidential buzz could result in more media appearances for Cheney to keep making the case against Trump.
The chatter is certainly not unhelpful for sales of her book, which is currently No. 1 on The New York Times’ nonfiction bestseller list.
But if Trump’s camp is concerned about a Cheney bid, or her influence in general, they certainly don’t sound like it.
“Loser Liz Cheney couldn't even hold on to her congressional seat, what makes her think she can run for President?” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung. “This is just one giant grift for her as she tries to sell more books.”
Cheney’s former colleagues don’t see it that way. They are fully convinced her top priority is to stop Trump and attest that anything she’s doing—even teasing a third-party bid—is in service to that goal.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a fellow former Jan. 6 committee member, said Cheney is “certainly not on an ego trip.”
“It's great that she's intensifying her political involvement because she understands that the election of Donald Trump, God forbid, would be a nightmare for the future of American democracy and human civilization,” Raskin said. “I trust her to make the best possible strategic and tactical decision about how she can be involved in making sure that won't happen.”
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) speaks to the media on Capitol Hill when she was a congresswoman.
But to other Democrats, it’s quite clear how Cheney can be most effective in helping to stop Trump: by endorsing and campaigning for Biden.
“If Liz Cheney wants to defeat Donald Trump, which I know she does, then she should get behind Joe Biden,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), a progressive ally of the president.
Schiff also urged Republicans with anti-Trump views to back Biden, though he did not mention Cheney specifically.
“It's very important that Republicans who are devoted to our democracy are willing to speak plainly about the threat Donald Trump presents and make it clear that if he's the nominee of the party, they'll support Joe Biden,” he said.
Foes of the former president have grown alarmed as third-party and independent presidential campaigns have sprouted, hoping to take advantage of voter discontent with a Biden-Trump rematch.
The general consensus is that most of these candidates are poised to hurt Biden, with perhaps one significant exception: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine and conspiracy theory activist who dropped his Democratic primary challenge for an independent bid with appeal to the MAGA coalition.
But Biden has potential problems to his left and to his center. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and the left-wing professor Cornel West, running as an independent, could pull disaffected progressives from the president’s camp.
No Labels, the big-money centrist group, is also promising to spend tens of millions of dollars to put forward a candidate who could appeal to both left and right; Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has done events with the group and hasn’t ruled out a run.
Jim Kessler, executive vice president of the center-left think tank Third Way, has been sounding the alarm about the risks of third-party candidates this election cycle.
“Our view is that any third party run by someone who represents the mainstream of anything helps Donald Trump,” Kessler said. “I expect [Cheney] will come to that same conclusion.”
Cheney, he said, is smart. “She understands politics,” he said. “And she understands the danger of Donald Trump and the best thing she could do is to endorse Joe Biden at some point and campaign for him.”
Some Biden loyalists were more blunt. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told The Daily Beast a Cheney run would mean “nothing and be irrelevant.”
“Anyone who wants to jump in, go right ahead and be humiliated,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign declined to comment on Cheney not ruling out a presidential campaign.
While many Democrats believe Cheney endorsing or campaigning for the president could be a powerful boost, she is at least publicly quite distant from Team Biden. Cheney and Biden do not have much of a relationship, though the president reportedly called her after her defeat to a Trump-backed primary challenger last year. In 2020, Cheney voted for Trump, but later said it was a mistake.
Still, the former GOP partisan has backed Democratic candidates for Congress. In 2022, Cheney endorsed or campaigned for Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), two swing-seat Democrats with backgrounds in national security. Both won re-election.
Earlier in December, Cheney told The Washington Post it was critical for Democrats to win control of the U.S. House in 2024, in large part to ensure that Trump’s GOP loyalists don’t have an opportunity to succeed where they failed in 2020 and throw the presidential election in his favor.
Previously, Cheney has said she would make a decision on a presidential run in the coming months—perhaps when it’s clear that Trump and Biden will be their party’s respective nominees again.
But some of Cheney’s admirers were not sold on the idea that she would necessarily be a Biden spoiler if she were to run.
“This stuff is not, like, for armchair analysis,” said Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), who has partnered with Cheney to make the case for continued U.S. aid to Ukraine.
“This definitely requires on the ground polling and a deep appreciation of how voters think about choices. We're also a year out,” he said. “I just would say that nobody's ego should be put ahead of the mission, and the mission is to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. And if that means, you know, targeted efforts in different states to detract from his vote count, if that means supporting Joe Biden directly, that is all to be discussed.”
“I would encourage her to be totally confident,” Auchincloss said, “that whatever she does meets that mission.”
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