House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been trying to lay down the law, declaring that any House Republican who supports Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection will be stripped of their assignments. Regardless, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming has joined House Democrats on the select committee, bluntly and proudly defying McCarthy. And when NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen appeared on the Daily Beast's podcast "The New Abnormal," he stressed that the House Republicans who are steering clear of Pelosi's select committee aren't doing so because of McCarthy — they are doing so out of fear of offending former President Donald Trump.
Allen told co-host Molly Jong-Fast, "I don't think there's a single Republican who is afraid of the awesome wrath of Kevin McCarthy. I think what they're afraid of is that Donald Trump will pick them out of the crowd and say that they're the person that Republican voters should turn against.
The NBC News reporter and author of the 2021 book "Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency," also told Jong-Fast, "In order for Kevin McCarthy to make good on this threat, Nancy Pelosi would have to allow a House floor vote on whether to take Liz Cheney off of her committees, as punishment for joining Pelosi's select committee on January 6."
Some pro-Trump pundits in the right-wing media have been describing Liz Cheney, the arch-conservative daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, as a RINO: Republican In Name Only, because she aggressively supported Trump's second impeachment following the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building. But Rep. Cheney has a hard-right voting record in the U.S. House of Representatives, and she isn't even a centrist — let alone a liberal or a progressive. Regardless, House Republicans removed her as House Republican Conference chair, and in Wyoming, seven different Republicans are challenging her in a 2022 GOP congressional primary. Trump's sycophants are hoping that Cheney won't make it to the general election because she dared to criticize "Dear Leader."