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Liz Cheney was behind WaPo op-ed by 10 ex-defense secys warning Donald Trump may politicize military: Report

Eric Edelman, a friend of the Wyoming lawmaker, told The New Yorker that Cheney did it out of anxiety over the 'threat' that the former president poses to the American democracy

Feuds in the Republican Party are found to be snowballing, particularly after embattled Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney has targeted former President Donald Trump who is planning to make a comeback and play a big role in the party in the near future. Cheney, daughter of former vice president and defense secretary Dick Cheney, has disagreed with Trump time and again and even voted for his impeachment in the House in January on charges of inciting the Capitol riots.

She has also rubbished the former president’s allegation that the 2020 election was stolen and on Wednesday, May 6, she even said in an op-ed that the GOP is at a turning point as it has to pick either Trump or the Constitution, which she alleged that the former commander-in-chief was trying to unravel. Some top members of the GOP, on the other hand, were trying to remove her from the post of the party’s conference and New York Rep. Elisa Stefanik is being backed for the job. To add more to the controversy around Cheney, it has been claimed that she secretly orchestrated a Washington Post op-ed which was authored by top military leaders just days before the Capitol riots of January 6 that left five people dead. The piece featured a stark warning from 10 former defense secretaries from both parties. The revelation, which will add to the fury of the pro-Trump members in the GOP, came just a couple of days after Cheney wrote her op-ed on the party’s future, also in the WaPo. 

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The Post piece from the former defense secretaries said the time for questioning the results of the 2020 election was gone and warned against involving the military in disputes that would take America into “unlawful and unconstitutional territory”. 

'Liz a living reproach to all these cowards'

Eric Edelman, a friend of junior Cheney who had worked as an aide to Dick Cheney and served as an undersecretary of defense for policy in the George W Bush administration, told The New Yorker that it was the Wyoming lawmaker who had secretly orchestrated the WaPo op-ed by all the former living defense secretaries, including her father who had served in the post under George HW Bush, warning Trump against politicizing the military.

Even Trump’s own first defense minister Jim Mattis, a former member of the armed forces who later had sharp differences with the former president, was asked to participate. His successor Mark Esper, who also had differences with Trump and was fired after the election last year, also chipped in. “She was the one who generated it, because she was so worried about what Trump might do,” Edelman was quoted as saying. “It speaks to the degree that she was concerned about the threat to our democracy that Trump represented.” 

“It’s all got to do with fealty to Trump and the Big Lie and the fact that Liz is a living reproach to all these cowards,” he added. 

Besides Cheney, Mattis and Esper, the other former defense ministers who contributed to the WaPo op-ed are Ashton Carter, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney’s unrelenting crusade against Trump and the latter’s fury against her has added to the GOP’s internal tensions. It is likely that Cheney could lose her post as a result in a voting on May 12 although there are also conservative voices who have doubted Stefanik who has been backed by Trump. 

Trump has repeatedly targeted Cheney as a “warmonger” and has blasted her since she voted for his impeachment along with nine other GOP members.