When President Trump left office, many establishment Republicans thought they could take over.
But Trump has no plan of handing control of the party back to them.
And now, one top RINO is reeling after Trump called her out at this year’s CPAC conference.
Last week, former President Trump made his first appearance since leaving office, when he gave a speech at CPAC in Florida. And he took full aim at many establishment Republicans like Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump at the beginning of the year.
During his speech, he pointedly referred to Cheney as a “warmonger” and a “person who loves seeing our troops fighting.” The crowd went wild with cheers, showing that the conservative base has fully abandoned the big government neoconservative cabal embodied by the Bush and the Cheney families.
Trump’s attack on Cheney came just a few seconds after he attacked Adam Kinzinger, another one of the most pro-war members of Congress.
Kinzinger, just a few years earlier, had slammed Trump for withdrawing troops from Syria, saying that “this is an endless war the terrorists decided to do against us,” which confused many people who correctly noted that none of the 9/11 terrorists were from Syria.
Cheney, for her part, passed an amendment to the NDAA in 2020 that prevented President Trump from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Experts say Cheney is trying to prevent the Afghan War from ever ending, so that her political donors in the defense industry can continue making money.
Needless to say, President Trump was not happy about her taking this action. He vocally opposed the amendment and even went so far as to veto the entire NDAA in opposition to it.
President Trump is not the only person in the MAGA movement who thinks Liz Cheney is a RINO warmonger.
Congressman Matt Gaetz has an ongoing feud with Cheney, which started when she tried to destroy his friend and ally Thomas Massie in a primary last summer.
Gaetz was so incensed by this, he traveled to her home state of Wyoming, giving a speech in Cheyenne where he told the crowd she had “blood on her hands” and urged them to defeat her in the next election.
He also pushed the GOP House conference to strip her of her leadership position, which the establishment ultimately refused to do under heavy pressure from the defense industry.
In his CPAC speech, Gaetz said that if Cheney were on stage, “she’d get booed off of it.” The crowd booed as soon as they heard her name, suggesting that his statement was true.
Many are organizing to stop Liz Cheney in the 2022 GOP primary in Wyoming, and toss the Cheney family out of the Republican Party forever.
State Sen. Anthony Bouchard, a noted Second Amendment advocate, is currently running in the primary to try to defeat her.
And many, including the former President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., have vowed to campaign against her to get her out of office.
Recent polls have shown her approval rating among Republican voters anywhere between 10% and 20%, which is shockingly low for a well-known member of the party.
The 2022 primary will decide who wins out – President Trump, or Liz Cheney.