(CNN) — Representative Liz Cheney is expected to lose her position in the Republican leadership of the US House of Representatives on Wednesday after publicly rejecting for months former President Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 presidential election.
House Republicans are likely to replace her with New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has a less conservative voting record than Cheney but has become one of Trump’s leading supporters. Cheney defended himself in a speech Tuesday night.
“We must tell the truth,” Liz Cheney said. Our election was not stolen. And the United States has not failed.
Cheney defended his previous comments, as well as his conservative credentials, in his conference amid criticism from Trump allies, who refused to accept the election result.
“I am a conservative Republican, and the most conservative of conservative principles is reverence for the rule of law,” she said. «The elections are over. That is the rule of law. That is our constitutional process. Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution.
Despite their enmity with Trump, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly in early February to keep Liz Cheney the No. 3 Republican in the House.
But a few weeks later, his resignation from Trump stood in stark contrast to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound after saying Trump was responsible in the attack on the Capitol in January and support Cheney in the leadership vote in February.
When asked by a reporter if Trump should speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, McCarthy said “yes,” while Liz Cheney said, “I don’t think I should play a role in the future of the party or the country.”
McCarthy then ended his appearances at press events with Cheney, raised questions about the election and distanced himself from his attacks.
Cheney’s comments last week appeared to be the last straw on McCarthy.
After Trump tried to rename his defeat as “¡THE GREAT LIE! “, The Republican of Wyoming noted that the 2020 elections” were not stolen “and tweeted that” anyone who claims they were is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their backs on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system. “
Well aware that the other members of the House Republican leadership are men, Trump, McCarthy, the House very Republican Steve Scalise and others were quick to endorse Stefanik, who has worked to elect more Republican women in Congress.
“Everyone in the leadership serves with the pleasure of the conference,” McCarthy said on Fox News last weekend. “We want to be united to move forward.”
When asked on Tuesday if Liz Cheney rejected Trump too much, Scalise argued that it was not specifically about Cheney’s comments about the former president, but how his comments detracted from the broader message from Republicans.
“This is not about right or wrong, it is about the focus of our conference and focusing on rolling back the agenda that is driving the Biden administration,” Scalise said Tuesday.
Stefanik’s approval of Trump has risen along with her upstate New York district, which supported Barack Obama in 2012 but opted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. In 2016, the congresswoman endorsed Trump as the party’s presidential candidate. , but occasionally criticized him and did not want to say his name when asked who he would support.
Early in Trump’s presidency, he aligned himself with then-House Speaker Paul Ryan and focused on his work on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees. He also broke with Trump on some key priorities, including his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord and the Republican tax bill of 2017.
But when House Democrats moved to impeach Trump for the first time in 2019, Stefanik emerged as one of the president’s most outspoken advocates. He earned praise from Trump in the process; the president called her “a new Republican star.”
In January, Stefanik objected to certifying the election of Joe Biden and supported a lawsuit in Texas that sought to overturn the election results in the states that Trump lost. The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit, saying Texas lacked standing to dismiss the results in other states.
Stefanik has continued to question Biden’s victory, saying last week that he “fully” supports a controversial Republican-led audit in Arizona, where Biden won by a narrow margin.
There is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 elections.
But some House Republicans who supported Cheney in February have said his continued rejection of Trump’s false claims has fractured the party’s message as they seek to win back the House of Representatives in 2022.
CNN’s Annie Grayer, Manu Raju, Lauren Fox, and Jeremy Herb contributed to this. report.
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