Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told Newsmax TV on Tuesday that the push to remove House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., from her leadership post is about maintaining a “consistent message,” and not her beliefs about former President Donald Trump.
Comer, when asked about the upcoming plans to hold a secret ballot on whether to oust Cheney, said, “our phones are ringing off the hook and I think most of my colleague’s phones are as well.
"I think a lot of the Republican base wants to know exactly where their member stands on this issue. It's an unfortunate situation, I don't think any of us want to be here. I came in the Congress with Liz Cheney, we sat that orientation together, they sit you by alphabetical order so Cheney and Comer were up beside each other. And I think that no one, or most members, don't fault Liz for her beliefs from Donald Trump, whether we agree with it or not, every member has the right to believe any way they want.”
He added, “But when you choose to be in leadership, especially conference chair, your focus should be on delivering the Republican message, and the Republican message is Joe Biden's policies are bad, [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi needs to be fired, and we need to remove Nancy Pelosi in the House. Republicans are the best line of defense in two years to shake things up in Washington and to stop this socialist agenda, so that's what our focus is about tomorrow. It's not about anything personal with Liz or her, certainly not her beliefs. It's just basically we want to be on a consistent message of how bad [President] Joe Biden and the Democrats are.”
When asked if the push to oust Cheney is part of a larger “rift” in the GOP between Trump followers and neo-conservatives in the vein of Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and a desire to take the country in a different direction, specifically on whether to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Comer said: “I agree, and that was one of the things I campaigned on,” removing troops from Afghanistan.
He added, “I represent for Campbell military base. We always have troops deployed to Afghanistan but it's time to bring the troops home. I'm not certain when that time should have been, and certainly a decade ago, but it's certainly long past time to remove the troops from Afghanistan. Certainly there are a lot of policy differences between most of the conference and Liz, but you know again, it's not about the beliefs that Liz has, with respect to foreign policy or the military or Donald Trump. It's just the fact that we want to be on a consistent message.