Former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a vocal anti-Trump Republican who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, criticized a number of other Republicans on Sunday for being too beholden to former President Donald J. Trump.
Ms. Cheney said in an interview on ABC News that she had never voted for a Democrat before, but would vote for Ms. Harris because she believed electing Mr. Trump would result in “unrecoverable catastrophe” for the country. She accused Republicans who back Mr. Trump — including Nikki Haley, who opposed him during the Republican primaries but now supports him — of betraying both the Constitution and their conservative principles in the service of allegiance to the party.
Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, also endorsed Ms. Harris on Friday. She strongly criticized Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, contrasting him unfavorably with former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to go along with Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Vance “has said specifically that he would, in fact, do that, that he would put Donald Trump’s orders and instructions ahead of the Constitution, and it is hard to imagine a much graver danger than a president and a vice president who will put themselves above the Constitution,” she said. (Mr. Vance has said that if he had been vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have told swing states Mr. Trump lost to send multiple slates of electors to Congress and let Congress decide which to accept.)
Ms. Cheney said that her decision to support Ms. Harris was based primarily on concern for democratic principles, saying, “Donald Trump presents a challenge and a threat fundamentally to the republic.” But she also argued that Mr. Trump’s policies, including his support for tariffs and an isolationist foreign policy, were antithetical to conservatism.
She had particularly harsh words for Ms. Haley, who ran against Mr. Trump in the Republican primary this year and criticized some of the same elements of his character, policy and actions that Ms. Cheney has, but who has since committed to doing whatever she can to help elect him.