Jonathan Swan Grills Liz Cheney on Restrictive Voting Laws: What Problems Are These Laws Solving?
Rep. Liz Cheney found herself at the receiving end of a fair but robust challenge on her defense of many new and controversial state voting laws by Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.
Rep. Cheney is something of the “IT” House Republican in many media circles after her unceremonious ouster from her GOP Caucus leadership role for repeatedly calling out the baseless claims of election fraud made by former President Donald Trump. Swan, of course, has quickly earned a reputation for giving the most elucidating and entertaining interviews in political media circles, which was on display in this conversation that aired during Sunday evening’s Axios on HBO.
“You don’t see any linkage between Donald Trump saying the election’s stolen and Republicans in all these state legislatures rushing to put in place these restrictive voter laws?” Swan asked Rep. Cheney.
“I think you have to look at the specifics of each one of those efforts. If you look at the Georgia laws, for example, there’s been a lot that’s been said nationally about the Georgia voter laws that turned out not to be true,” Cheney responded.
But Swan wasn’t having that reponse and pushed back, noting “I don’t think anyone doubts that the reason 400-some voting bills have been introduced, 90 percent by Republicans, supported by the Republican National Committee, I don’t think it’s a coincidence after the election that this has happened.”
Cheney refused to take the bait, and insisted that “everybody should want a situation and a system where people who ought to be able to vote and have the right to vote should vote and people who don’t shouldn’t.”
“But what problem are they solving for?” Swan pushed back, seeing as each state certified its results, and found that the 2020 general election was, by and large, as buttoned-up is any in recent memory. Cheney simply responded: “Each state is different… I think you gotta look at each individual state law.”
“What was the big problem in Georgia that needed to be solved by a new law? What was the big problem in Texas? What was the big problem in Florida?” Swan pushed. “These laws are coming all around the states and what are they solving for?”
Cheney replied, “I think you got to look at each individual state law…” to which Swan winced by noting, “you can’t divorce them from the context.”
She then pivoted to what she sees now as “very dangerous,” and compared Al Gore’s concession to former President George W. Bush in 2000 to Trump’s unwillingness to accept defeat. “I will never understand the resistance, for example, to voter ID,” she added. “There’s a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede.”
Watch above via HBO.
