Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, wait for the swearing-in of members of Congress in the House Chamber in January 2017.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Liz Cheney in her new book said some in the Freedom Caucus frowned on a personal June 2020 tweet.Cheney in the tweet featured her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, wearing a mask.Mask-wearing became a polarizing subject among conservatives even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, during the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, mask-wearing was an essential way of life for millions of Americans, especially among those who were older or immunocompromised.
But as former Rep. Liz Cheney writes in her new book, “Oath and Honor,” some members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus were upset when she tweeted out a photo of her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, wearing a mask.
“[T]hey seemed especially upset when I tweeted a picture of my dad wearing a mask in June of 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the caption ‘Real Men Wear Masks,'” the former Wyoming lawmaker wrote.
Cheney brought up the situation to highlight some of the issues that she had with the group during her tenure in Congress, even when she served the chair of the House Republican Caucus.
Rep. Liz Cheney posts a photo of former Vice President Dick Cheney in face mask and says “real men wear masks” https://t.co/qNNqcXzX62 pic.twitter.com/hiUzrhytzs
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 27, 2020
“My voting record was more conservative than those of many members of the Freedom Caucus, a supposedly ‘conservative’ group,” she wrote. “But a number of its members were hypersensitive to any criticism I made of Donald Trump.”
“As it turned out, nothing came of their threats to challenge our leadership team,” she continued, describing the top echelon of the GOP conference after the 2020 elections. “Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and I were each reelected to our positions without opposition.”
However, after Cheney continued to criticize former President Trump regarding his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, she was removed from her leadership role by the larger conference.
She later served on the House January 6 committee as its vice chair and in her new book she warned that the 2024 presidential election is poised to be a referendum on the preservation of democracy in the United States if Trump is once again the GOP nominee.