past. and that is always the case, the people who feel there is a war don't experience the war. but they're watching constant wartime footage on whatever device they have in front of them that is telling them, it's fearful. they are taking it away. you are the victim. and so you hit people who are close minded, and they feel like their religion, their point of view, there believes are the number one culprit, number one thing that people are attacking in this country. and then you go to new york, that liberal hellhole, and then they celebrate christmas oblivious to the reality. >> the liberal hellhole with all the christmas trees, liberal hellhole. very quickly, before i let you here and go at it head on. desantis and haley, this debating, a person was not even running for president. and haley is running nomini think people need to attk what's happening righ at the base. please, have more of these conversations. >> jordan klepper, thank you for offering your services. that does it for me tonight. the rachel maddow show starts right now. hi, rachel. show. i disagree with liz cheney about everything.it my whole adult life on everything in politics i would not just say that liz cheney and i were on different proverbial teams, i would say we were from

different proverbial planets, and they are planets most at war with each other. she's a politician. i am not a politician. but i am definitely a liberal. she is definitely a hard core conservative. and i disagree with liz cheney on like everything you can think of, on the environment, on abortion rights, profoundly. i think she's not just wrong on abortion. she's capital w wrong on abortion in a terrible way. i disagree vehemently with her on voting rights and on the iraq war and on the afghanistan war and our relationship or lack thereof of iran and terrorism and guns and like mining on intellectual property and the rules of the house of representatives. honestly, i once even got mad

about liz cheney about fishing. even on fishing i got mad at her about something. we are opposites. and it is not like a casual thing either. here, for example, it is just one indication of the scale of x this as an obsession for me, my differences with liz cheney. before the plan to meet her here this evening, liz cheney and i have met exactly one previous time, which she will not remember. it was in 2010, so it was 13 years ago, and even three years after that one brief 2010 meeting, i was still on this show in 2013 playing clips of that meeting because i was still fixated on it. i was still wanting to interview her about all of the many and profound ways in which we of disagree. i have not been back to see pac since then because that year i

think i was a little scarred. i was scarred with disappointment by a very, very disappointing encounter i had at cpac with liz cheney. >> hi. rachel maddow. >> hi, rachel. how are you. >> take care. i think that was it. i don't know what she said. w she was -- she smiled at he. >> what i said is i would love to interview you some time if you would ever want to do it. and she said, oh, hi rachel. i asked her if she would call and she didn't.'t i would still love to interview you. >> i would love to interview you some time. that interaction was 13 years ago. i was still talking about it, still begging for an interview with her three years after that like two-second interaction. of course she was never going to say yes because why on earth would there be any advantage in

talking with someone who disagreed with everything you stood for in public life and politics? why would you want to do an interview like that? and, again, in some ways, this is funny and dumb, but it is also -- i have to tell you and e being truly honest, it has been a serious thing to me.in it has been part of how i understand myself and my pa political time as an american that i am someone fundamentally opposed to the politics of liz cheney and her father dick cheney, white house chief of staff and vice president and the fundamentally disastrous george bush administration in which lie cheney served. i literary starting writing books in the first place more than a decade ago because i had so much to get off my chest with what i thought was wrong with the cheney approach to war.

the first book i wrote was inspired by the iran contra rs scandal during the reagan administration. this first book i ever wrote isn literally dedicated to him, to former vice president dick cheney, oh, please, let me interview you. and that feeling extended to his daughter, who is his political descendant both literally and proverbially in every way. as dedicated as liz cheney is to her father, dick cheney, they are profoundly close as father i and daughter, there is not room for a piece of paper to slide between them on policy. as close as they are, as much as she revered her dad, i feel the same way about my dad. i wear -- i wear one piece of jewelry. i wear my dad's high school d' ring. my dad is -- is brilliant and kind and as far as i can tell, i he is right about absolutely everything. he's an air force veteran. he's a very careful lawyer. and my whole life my dad was

kind of the soul of moderation when it came to politics until liz's dad, the dick cheney vice presidency had the effect of an almost religious conversion on my own dad, moving his politics, what seems to be about 50 points west of where they had ever been before. so vehemently did he object, as did i to chaney brand republicanism during the george w. bush era. so it's weird. like they're the big -- i thinkr the cheney family is the biggest touchdown that i have in american politics in my i lifetime.it it is a funny thing but it is also personal and real, and it is a thing that matters to me. and i say this tonight, not for the -- just the gee whiz factor of me having liz cheney here tonight, me having someone here tonight you would never expect, i say this not only for the man bites dog weirdness of this, i

say it because i think in civicn terms, in american citizenship e term, i think it is really important how much we disagree.t it is important how far apart we are. it is important that liz cheney is infinity, and i am negative infinity on the ideological number line. it is important because that tells you how serious and big something has to be to put us, to put me and liz cheney together on the same side of something in american life. i mean, i'm sure like noah had a hard time convincing the mice that they should get on the samv boat with the snakes or the gazelles that they should hop on board the ark with the lions. but needs must. normal combat, normal willingness to chomp on each other or run or defend ourself from each other yields to the imperative of the world destroying flood where all the land animals face the same fate

because now we're either all going down or we're all in the same boat. on the january 6th investigation in congress, you'll remember that the chairman was the gentleman on the left here, mississippi democrat benny thompson. during their investigation, he told liz cheney, the vice chair of that investigation, that he looked forward when it was all done, to goingit back to our corners and resuming our earlier fights. i know exactly what he means by that. i feel the same way.am but for now, for tonight, f because of where we are as a country, liz cheney is here to talk about something bigger than the fights i have imagined om having with her my whole life. and she's sacrificed a lot to have earned the right to have that conversation. she had the number three job in republican leadership in washington. republicans voted her out of it.

she was primaried and voted out of her seat in congress. major republican fund-raising committees raise money off attacking her, again, who was the number three republican in , washington.hr she voted to impeach former president trump for trying to i overthrow the government by force and stay in power after he lost re-election with congressman benny thompson. she led the blockbuster congressional investigation int trump's plot against the country, showing us all who did it and how. as a conservative, as a republican, one dynamic that i think makes it particularly valuable for people like me, democrats and liberals, at least, to hear from her, to know -- to know what she knows is that her life experience is so different and her colleagues are so different, her milieu isa so different, her sight lines are different from line and i , guess maybe from yours. she doesn't hear from, you know, liberal constituents cheering her on for taking on the would be dictator in washington.r she hears from her congressional constituents in wyoming, which gave the single largest margin of victory to donald trump of gl

any state in the country in 2020. even as a lot of the country is repeatedly struck by the t insanity of what's been happening in republican politics, where she lives and among the people she serves and who elected her, it's all believed and earnestly so and seeing that helps us understand how dangerous it is.ng it makes it more explicable.mo i mean, here's an example of what i mean. this is from her book.n. this is the infamous rudy h giuliani hair dye press conference in the aftermath of the 2020 election. she says, quote, transfixed by the hair dye dripping down his face, it was challenging to th focus on what he was saying.t

as he introduced sydney powell, he made this announcement. he said i don't think most americans know that our ballots get calculated, many of them n' outside the united states and it is being done by a company that specializes in voter fraud.un according to giuliani, american has used largely a venezuelan voting machine to count our us vote.ne if we let this happen, we are going to become venezuela. what is he talking about, i h thought?al was sidney powell going to provide evidence for this claim? powal explained that been hacked by dominion voting machines and software which she said was software created at s venezuela at the direction of tw hugo chavez and described an algorithm that switched votes t from trump to biden and had trashed trump votes. we learned about this only a because trump got so many votes in 2020 that the whole system broke. but we needed to be aware, she warned, that the same sinister source code resided in voting t machines all across the country. her voice breaking with emotion, sidney powell, said this was all stunning, heart breaking and infuriating, and the most

unpatriotic acts i can even imagine forfu people in this country to have participated in. she claimed president trump won by a landslide. we're going to prove it and re-claim the united states of america for the people who vote for freedom. cheney says the whole performance was too bizarre for words. my daughter who had been following the litigation closely and was increasingly disgusted with what trump's lawyers were doing, texted me that night. she said, mom, i think it is um safe to say that rudy giuliani's hair dye dripping down his face today was an act of god.ye but the damage had already been done. a millions of americans, including tens of thousands of my own constituents, believed these am lies, and they believed in the people telling them. one constituent called the ngen performance clear-eyed and determined. this person said sidney powell struck her at forthright. she said the trump lawyer had been shaking with righteous anger, quote, very persuasive. then she added, of course the talking heads will dismiss themd "f" them. cheney says we were in dangerous territory.

the president and his legal team were making outlandish and false claims that struck at the heart of our electoral process. millions of americans believed them, and the trump campaign ns continued to send e-mails and runs ads spreading the falsehoods all over the country. donald trump was doing it nearly every time he spoke publicly. i knew how perilous this was. the next day i issued a statement calling on president e trump to put up or shut up. elsewhere in the book, here's u cheney talking about the kind ot things she was hearing from her constituents back in wyoming and where they were getting their w information. she said, quote, i also found many of those in wyoming that were the most upset or angry were uh-uh wear of the violence on january 6th. they believed the day to have been almost entirely peaceful. they read the epic times, a, quote, news website that re presents extremely slanted ot reporting in the guise of a straightforward media outlet. they believed what they saw on w their social media feeds.d they watched almost exclusively fox news or news max or oam.lm as a result, they were ne t completely unaware of what

actually happened. more than a few believed i pe should be pressing for joe biden's removal from office anda donald trump's reinstallation as president. that's a valuable perspective, right? those are valuable sightlines for any of us who have been struggling to understand the kind of grip this anti-democratic movement has on our fellow americans.-d liz cheney is seeing it becausee i mean, in my own life i think it is because she's so differen than me.e i mean, she got just as many votes from those folks in wyoming in 2020 as donald trump did. and, so, she knows them, and they thought they knew her. it's also valuable to have a conservative republican member of congress writing about something we can't see from the outside, what's going on among conservative republicans behind closed doors while they're giving in to this anti-democratic plot.ti we learned, for example, on page 124 of liz cheney's new book foe that a senior republican staffer

on the rules committee wrote in the republican staff memo on impeachment less than a week s after the january 6th attack on congress, this is the republicau staff memo, the person wrote that trump had committed impeachable offenses, calling what trump did, quote, a serioud act political in nature that corrupted or subverted the political process and threatened the order of political society. that's the republican staff memo on impeachment after january 6th. previously unreported. we learn on page 74 that the dav before january 6th, kevin mccarthy's general counsel, the top lawyer for the top republican in the house, told congressman mike johnson that the effort he was organizing to get house republicans to sign on to trump's effort to over flow e the election was an effort that was wildly unconstitutional in its basis. quote, later that night i heard from kevin mccarthy's chief y' counsel, mckala car, who told me

she had made clear to mike johnson that his letter was wrong. she said that she knew it was. she said he pushed back very strongly. excuse me. she said she pushed back very strongly and his argument that he has some sort of power to individually determine absent due process of any sort that a state didn't meet the constitutional obligation and that the remedy should be that without any process whatsoever, the federal congress gets to overturn the will of the people is astonishing. astonishing, that's the top lawyer serving the top republican in the house. telling him what he's doing is unconstitutional as he's doing it. mike johnson, of course, is now no longer just an anonymous back benched member of congress. he's now the leader. he's now the republican speaker of the house.

page 32 of her book, liz cheney describes communications with b republican staffers on capitol hill about the court filing thaa mike johnson, in fact, led as part of trump's election , challenge, concluding that he might personally have ethical issues as a lawyer, as in with his professional accreditation, for having made factual assertions in that brief about things he didn't actually have factual information about. as you know, lots of trump lawyers have faced professional punishment for lies they told on trump's behalf after the election. liz cheney in her new book asserts that the house speaker mike johnson might be one of those lawyers. on page 228, she says congressman jim jordan, who was nearly speaker himself, she says he may need the assistance of a criminal lawyer for sorting out the conflicting claims he made during congressional testimony about his communications with donald trump while the january 6th attack was underway. on page 18 of her book, jim jordan gets this from liz cheney.

quote, jordan did make a memorable pitch to me to join the group. would you consider joining the freedom caucus? we don't have any women, and wes need one. cheney says, tempting as this offer was, i took a pass. on page 153, here's liz cheney's good-bye to congresswoman stefanik. they thought i should have provided them cover for their votes against impeachment. i had heard this complaint who told me because of my vote to d impeach people were writing us letters to the editors of her newspapers criticizing her and e asking her why she hadn't taken the same stand that i had. cheney said, quote, that seemed less my problem than hers. many of us who had known elise stefanik since before she abandoned all principle was curious aboutd how she had los her sense of right and wrong.

cheney says a number of the men who spoke in favor of removing me from leadership said they f didn't like my tone.er i wasn't contrite enough, nor had i learned my lesson. ralph norman of south carolina kept repeating his problem with me is my attitude.ca you have just got such a defiant attitude. a couple of my male colleagues were so enraged by my unwillingness to apologize, they got themselves really worked up and seemed on the verge of tears as they were lecturing me. i tried to follow what the most emotional members were saying, but it wasn't easy.mb mike kelly of pennsylvania, for example, seemed angry because i had released a statement before i voted. in an effort to describe how upset he was, mike kelly said, it is like you're playing in the biggest game of your life and you look up and see your girlfriend sitting on the an opponent's side. s cheney says, these were grown id men. t this was 2021. i was standing at the podium at the front of the auditorium ng thinking, you have got to be kidding me. other female members started yelling, she's not your girlfriend.

yeah, i said. i'm not your girlfriend. she really isn't. truly. they're so upset about her tone and about her not taking their feelings into account. but she doesn't take their feelings into account. she is relentless about what she sees is going on and who's failing and how in real-time and why it's important. she is blistering, blistering throughout this book, particularly about people like speaker mike johnson and about j people like senator josh hawleye who she says deserved all the ridicule that he got during thed january 6th hearings for running away after briefly showing his fist to the mobs that were about to attack the capital.is she's blistering about ted cruz who she says committed, quote, g one of the worst cases of c abandonment of duty for personar ambition i have ever seen in washington when he proposed a multiday delay on certifying the

election results, a strategy that cruz coordinated with the trump white house. liz cheney in her new book takes the bark of former speaker kevin mccarthy again and again and again. kevin mccarthy and mitch o'connell each had the opportunity as individuals to stop donald trump's threat to as the country. neither of them did so. both failed.he mccarthy, she's just unsparing about.e' she reminds us that mccarthy rescued trump before january 6th, the day the tape came out t of trump's call to georgia ay officials.al this is from page 65 of the book. quote, when i saw reports about the call, i assumed the audio of trump pressuring state officialu to violate the law and overturn the election would mean the end of most of the objections to thw electoral count in the house. i couldn't imagine members would continue to do trump's bidding. a short time later after what we all assumed was significant pressure from trump, kevin announced that he would be voting to object.

i was certain that kevin did not believe the objections were constitutional, nor that they could be justified by any al genuine fraud in the election. his chief counsel clearly did d not think so, but this has never really been about principle for kevin. that's when mccarthy saves trumu the first time.th then mccarthy saves trump the me second time to try to keep trump in power when mccarthy went to florida and visited trump and in those photographs smiling with him. cheney says, i went to see kevin when he got back to d.c. mar-a-lago?smilin what the hell, kevin. he tried to down-play the whole thing. he said he'dwh been in florida anyway when trump's staff called him. they're really worried, he said, trump's not eating so they asked me to come see him. what? yeah, he's really depressed.

yeah, he's really depressed. i'm still trying to process thie unexpected rational when kevin i added, he keeps trying to talk to me about january 6th, and i tell him, we can't.ou we're under oath. c kevin said, we're under oath in the present tense as though he e had already been sworn in as a witness. i assumed one of kevin's lawyers had warned him not to talk to talk about january 6th because they thought trump would be in serious legal jeopardy. apparently he was trying to say back to me what he had been told by his lawyers. the truth was simple. he went there to mar-a-lago because his ability to make e ab money dried up after january 6th when every corporate donor said they would stop making campaign contributions.wh kevin's strength in our conference was derived largely from his fund-raising ability. he was not a natural leader.as now his strength was gone. kevin needed money. a trump had lists of small dollar donors, but d kevin would have go beg trump for them. andeg in order to use those lis, kevin would have to help donald trump cover up the stain on our democracy. it was a price kevin mccarthy was willing to pay. every time kevin mccarthy has

faced a decision of consequence, he's done the wrong thing. told she she takes the bark off. and that's like a tenth of it. with mitch mcconnell, republican senate leader, she is more kind in her tone, if i may say. but she also pretty much puts him on the down escalator in terms of where he will end up d paying for his actions for eternity.is she said she, quote, never stopped wondering why mcconnell had opposed the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate what happened on january 6th. she said senator mcconnell was wrong to vote against convicting trump and his etch poochlt especially because that one decisiones by that one man in o moment might have ended all of the peril for i our nation. page 162. leader mcconnell who had made a career out of savvy political calculation and behind the scenes maneuvering got this one wrong. i had known mitch mcconnell for

more than 20 years and i had respected him. few could match mcconnell's mastery ofw tactics of politic leadership, but i thought he made a number of mistakes in this case. including not agreeing to call the congress back into session during the impeachment trial and not telling me. liz cheney is republican royalty to the extent we have that in this country. she is now the sharpest thorn in the side of the republican party, and she is naming names, quoting e-mails, producing phone records, and explaining the stakes. she is taking zero prisoners in an effort that she says is aimed at nothing short of saving the country, making sure that this nextak election is not our last. she says if trump is re-elected in 2024 it is likely that he will not leave power. in her new book "oath and honor a memoir and a warning," liz

cheney says at the end on page 365 that if trump is re-elected to the white house he will in her words wdismantle the republic. and what that means is that everybody who wants us to remain a republic has to put every other thing aside and work together urgently right now to stop that from happening. which means specifically to keep him from regaining power. how does she propose we do that? she'se devoting her political life to this cause. her bookfe is out tomorrow or tonight at midnight. "the new york times" describes it as a five-alarm warning. i second that. and i never thought i'd say this,ou but liz cheney is rightn issuing that warning. i believe it. a miracle of all miracles she is here joining me live next. miras here joining me live next. get life insurance," hm. i have a few minutes. i can do that now. oh, that fast? remember that colonial penn ad? i called and i got information.

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its author is former wyoming congresswoman liz cheney. liz cheney, wow. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> nice to meet you. >> really nice to meet you. >> is this as weird for you as this is me? >> it's pretty weird. it certainly is. your intro brought back a lot of memories. and but -- but i think that it just is a real symbol of how grave this danger is. but i also was thinking as i was watching it, the power of the fact that somebody who is where you are in the political spectrum and somebody who is where i am on the political spectrum are able to say, this is a five-alarm fire and we have put that aside and be able to say what are we going to do to come together to save the republic. >> the fights we righteously and in good faith and vehemently have together can wait. >> yeah. >> because part of what we're defending is -- >> but i would like a rain check to come back and have those fights. >> we could do a day on abortion, a day on mining, a day on fishing.

>> national security. >> several days on national security. let me ask you about a moment in your book that happened on january 4th. that's described in chapter nine of your book. you describe listening in on a call in which trump lawyers are briefing what we call surrogates. that's basically people that are going to go on tv and talk about the pro-trump side of things. in that call jenna ellis describes what they're envisioning for january 6th. the way you write it is in the scenario ellis described when pence was presiding he could either refuse to open or refuse to count the electoral votes. they don't necessarily know you are on this call. you're listening in. it's two days before january 6th. was that the moment when it really became clear to you in detail what they were trying to do? >> yes. you know, i had heard. obviously there had been talk about we're going to have these electors meet. i think steven miller had been talking about that.

but it wasn't clear to me what the contours of this particular part of the plan were until i dialled into that phone call. and listening to them describe how these fake electors were going to be used and the fact that they anticipated that vice president pence was going to use them to refuse to count the legitimate electors was certainly a moment of -- of intense concern and as i got off that call i ran into the capitol into the office of the parliament tear of the house to say, wait a minute, this is what i'm hearing is going to happen. what do we do about it in the joint session? how do we stop this? and it was very clear that there were not a lot of good answers to that because i knew -- i learned later through the investigation that vice president pence and his counsel were having discussions with the senate parliamentarian and that the vice president ultimately, of course, did his duty bravely. but if you are in a joint session of congress, you know, you're not in a position where there are a lot of legislative

steps that you can take except to basically move to adjourn. so it was a very dangerous and chilling moment. >> i feel like a lot of the last seven or eight years has been me trying to figure out crazy versus dangerous. and i finally realized that crazy and dangerous very much can overlap. they can be the same thing. >> yep. >> in that moment when it started to become clear to you what might happen, did it strike you as an insane thing that they were going to try to create a chaotic situation, or did it strike you as something that might succeed in toppling the government? >> you know, i had been getting these hints through the months after the election of sort of glimpses into things that they were attempting to do. and each time, sort of, i saw something come up, and i kept

thinking -- and i think a lot of us kept thinking, all right, he will bring these court challenges but, of course, once the courts have ruled, he will concede and move on. each time we thought we were at an end, we weren't really at an end. i think this was probably the most chilling moment where it was suddenly real that, you know, this wasn't just some sort of a pr effort to suggest that he hadn't lost the election. there was a very real plan to stop us from counting legitimate electoral votes. and, frankly, that realization and that recognition, it was nauseating because it was so scary. wait a minute. this is what they're going to try to do. >> you mentioned the court orders there. and you stress in your public remarks on this topic and throughout the book all of the different courts that ruled on the factual assertions that were made about the supposed flaws in the election. you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of court rulings, including from trump-appointed judges, all finding those claims about a fraudulent election were nonsense. and my sense from hearing the way you described that and how

that's so woven into your sort of expository tactics around this issue, is that you are worried about the courts being obeyed. you know, you say over and over again in the book that you think there is no reason that trump should be expected to follow court orders in a second term, that he wouldn't obey the rulings of the supreme court if the judiciary tried to stand in his way. can you just kind of game that out in practical terms, particularly for people that are watching that aren't lawyers that may not understand why that's the biggest deal in the world. why is that so core to what you are learning about? >> because we live in a system in which we have to be governed by law. and, so, when courts issue rulings, we could disagree with them. you know, you and i probably disagree, for example, on the supreme court's rulings on obamacare. i can say, look, i think the court got it wrong.

we have to abide by it. if we get into a situation where you have a president who is charged with insuring that the laws are faithfully executed, who has just this awesome power -- and by "awesome," i mean larger than the power that resides in just about any other individual in the world. to determine whether or not this country is going to continue to be a republic, is going to continue to function as a nation of laws. when you have a president who is willing to go to war with the rule of law, to ignore the rulings of the courts if he doesn't agree with them, that -- that has the potential to unravel everything. and i think people just need to think about, you know, if a court issues a compulsory order, if the president decides he's not going to abide by it, he's not going to obey it, it's not compulsory.

this also extends to criminal law and particularly when you are talking about a president and you are talking about the pardon power. so imagine a situation where, you know, the people around him, the lawyers that he's hired and the administration, you may have some who would, you know, you could imagine them stepping up and saying, wait, we can't take that action, we can't do that for legal reasons and the president combining both his determination to ignore the rulings of the courts with offering pardons to people who do his bidding, and it is a really toxic and very dangerous mix. and i think that people need to take seriously the potential that he will do that because, in fact, we're watching him and listening to him say he will do it now. >> and it is a kind of pane of glass situation, right, because once it's broken, it's broken. once an executive is not obeying the court order, then the judiciary is effectively neutered from the whole country. >> and i think it's important

also to recognize the role that the judiciary is playing now. and at a moment where we have not been able to count on, frankly, many of the republicans in elected office to uphold the constitution when, you know, we were living through a president who was not willing to abide by his oath and, in fact, was taking action that was directly contrary to law and to the constitution, the judiciary has almost without exception been absolutely stalwart. and it doesn't matter. you can point to judges and justices appointed by democratic presidents and appointed by republican presidents. and again, almost without exception, they have been just clearer and more dedicated and done exactly what we need them to do, what we expect the judiciary to do at a moment when, you know, we're watching the former president and members of my party claim that, you know, the judiciary is somehow weaponized against us. but we need the courts, we need the judicial system.

we need the rule of law to function. that means you have to have a president in particular who takes seriously his obligation to uphold it. >> one of the major institutions that trump is playing with along those lines is the u.s. armed forces. i want to ask you about that. when we come back, liz cheney is our guest. the book is called "oath and honor." we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us ts. this ipad pro sold for less than $34. and this nintendo switch, sold for less than $20. i got this kitchenaid stand mixer for only $56. i got this bbq smoker for 26 bucks. and shipping is always free. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save.

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with us once again is former wyoming congresswoman liz cheney. her new book is called "oath and honor, a memoir and a warning." liz, you focus very early on in the book on the fact that trump two days after he lost the election, he fired the defense secretary. why do you think he did that? why is that important? >> well, first of all, to have a situation where a president who has lost the election and, so, we should be going through a transition and a transition is a period of time when the united states is particularly potentially vulnerable and especially the defense department. you have a nonpartisan transition. you have to have a situation where people are very focused on what is the good of the country? people recognize we may have lost the election, but those politics should not be part of any kind of decisions that are being made, especially during the transition period. and, so, to see donald trump

fire his defense secretary, and we know now, of course, much more about what was happening at the time. i was very concerned at the time he was also replacing other senior leaders at the department. we know now, for example, that he had told johnny mcenty at one point to ensure that the secretary of the army and the chief of staff of the army knew if they issued any more statements saying that the u.s. army had no more elections that they would be fired. you combine that with the steps we know mike flynn was urging him to take be taken publicly, things like deploying the military in order to re-run elections in swing states. and i think that's one of the real dangers people have to focus on when we think about a potential second trump administration. we would take those people who are the most radical, the most dangerous, who had the proposals that were the most dangerous, and he will put them in

positions of supreme power. and that's -- that is a risk that we simply cannot take. >> obviously, he's been playing with that -- with the announcement about signing the insurrection act or invoking the insurrection act on day one. one of the other things that you have talked about in terms of a second round and whether or not january 6th was sort of a dress rehearsal or best effort and they will be better at it the second time around is the prospect that after the 2024 election, maybe republicans will still be in control in the house. maybe mike johnson will still be speaker. given what mike johnson did in and around the 2020 election, what is the risk in terms of him potentially still being speaker of the house? him controlling the house of representatives in the aftermath of the next election? >> you know, it is -- it's terrifying. and i say that with no -- no pleasure. it pains me that that's where we are. but --

>> you were friends with him. >> i was. we were elected the same year. our offices were next door to each other. and i believed mike to be a man of principle. what i learned was that he was willing to do things he knew to be wrong in order to placate donald trump. and, again, a situation where you have a speaker of the house who, as you detailed at the beginning of the show, so clearly set aside what he knew to be the facts, what he knew to be the law, what he knew to be our obligations under the constitution in order to try to help donald trump and his efforts in 2020, we cannot count on -- on a majority of republicans, on someone like that to do the right thing, to uphold the constitution if, for example, we had an election that was thrown into the house, if nobody got 270 electoral votes. so it is really serious. >> or if they needed to certify the electoral count? >> yeah, yeah. >> the book is called "oath and honor: a mémoir and a warning." we're back with liz cheney right

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joining us once again is liz cheney. so, liz, you're effectively sounding this alarm. you're telling americans to stand up and try to save the republic. you have cautioned that if trump is returned to power, it might be our last election. you're basically telling people to stand up by voting against trump. when i think about people

watching at home, you know, like somebody who just got off their third shift or a retired teacher or a college student watching on their phone right now, i don't know that people necessarily feel like that action is enough to respond to the kind of threat that you are alerting us to. what -- what else should people be doing besides casting their vote in the way you say is right to try to defend the country right now? >> well, i think it is about more than -- i think certainly trump is the most significant threat. but i think that, you know, we're facing an emergency across the board. i think people need to think about, first of all, running for office themselves. and i say that with great seriousness. you know, we need -- if you look at the threats our country is facing, we need serious people in office. and i don't care if you agree with me or you disagree with me on any range of issues. if you are going to fight for the constitution and you are going to defend the constitution and you are going to be a serious and faithful public servant, then please run for

office, please vote for people that will do that. in this last election cycle, for the first time in my life, i endorsed democrats. and these were women that i worked with either on the armed services committee or on national security issues, in other ways. women who we had disagreements, but i knew they cared deeply about this country. they were going to do the right thing and they were running against election deniers. if you look at the extent to which some of the trump forces are organized from the local level up to the presidency, those of us who believe in the constitution and who are going to defend the democracy have to be organized in the same way. and it means being willing to set aside other issues, and it means making sure that when you cast your vote, you are not doing it based on partisanship. and it means helping to educate people and talking to people about how -- how gravely perilous and significant this moment is.

>> i feel like what you describe as a cult of personality was more likely to emerge on the right than on the left because i feel like people on the right have been getting told by the republican party my whole adult life that government is the problem, like ronald reagan said, and we need voting restrictions because democrats cheat and, you know, we need unregulated guns, not just for hunting and self-defense but because we need to stand up against our government tyranny and all the stuff that maybe works in the short-term but in the long term builds towards roodicalism and open up the right more than the left. i think we probably disagree on that strongly. >> we do disagree on that. but i would say the way i look at it is those of us on the right in this moment have a particularly great responsibility and duty because this threat has emerged from the right. we can talk about why that was. i think that, frankly, there are millions of people around the

country who feel like they aren't heard, and donald trump managed to convince them he would be their voice, which is, of course, a complete lie, but they bought it. and he preyed on that patriotism. right now it is i think partly why i have been so -- so disappointed with what i have seen from other members of my party in their unwillingness to step up. i think we have a particular duty to step up. >> you look ahead to a year from now, heading into the next election cycle. if trump wins, if trump is the nominee of the republican party, and he wins and he's back in power, what is your life like and what do you think the noble, patriotic righteous fight is to save the country at that point? >> i don't even want to imagine a situation where he has won. i think we have to do everything we can to stop him in terms of, again, the kind of things we have been working on, working in a nonpartisan fashion. but i also think about it from the perspective of my kids. and, you know, there was a

moment right after january 6th where i was having dinner with my husband and our two youngest kids who happen to be our sons, and i looked at my sons across the dinner table and i had this realization, you know, i grew up in a country where i didn't have to wonder if we were going to have a peaceful transfer of power in the united states. all of a sudden it occurred to me, my god, maybe they won't be able to say the same thing. that is why it is so fundamentally important we ensure democrats, independents, republicans that we work together, we vote together, we make clear that donald trump is not an acceptable alternative. he is not the lesser of two evils. he is a completely unfit man for office. he's already shown us what he

would do and he could never be near the oval office again. >> it sounds like you really don't want to think about what resistance or fighting for your country or trying to hold on to democracy looks like with him in power. you won't go there. >> well, we will be successful at making sure he's not elected president again. >> let me ask you one last question. and i mean this, i think, with the -- coming out from the understanding that i think i garnered from your book and what i understand from your spirit about these things, which is that after you got voted out of your republican leadership job in washington, it was clear you were going to lose your seat in congress as well. and you didn't quit. you decided you were going to make them vote you out and not make it any easier for them. but it would have made it a lot easier for you, too. why did you make that decision? >> i don't -- i don't think it would have made it easier because at the end of the day the question really is, you know, what's more important here? and to me, there was no world in

which you would say maintaining this house seat matters more than standing up for truth. and it became clear that in order to stay in leadership, i was going to have to tell donald trump's lies, and i wasn't willing to do that. but it wasn't a choice for me. and, frankly, i don't think it is a choice for any american now given the takes and given how significant this threat is. >> the book is called "oath and honor: a mémoir and a warning." liz cheney, what a remarkable -- what a world. and i know that it's -- despite everything, it is not the easiest thing in the world to sit down with me here for an hour, but i really appreciate. >> thank you. i appreciate it. >> let's keep the conversation going. >> we will. >> i really want to fight about a lot of things with you in the future. that's going to do it for us tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. congress has to decide whether to continue to support the fight for freedom in ukraine