Donald Trump is seeking to tighten his iron grip on the party even after a ruling Wednesday extending his ban on Facebook.
Despite losing the presidency to Joe Biden last year and enduring a second impeachment after January’s deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the brash billionaire remains his party’s most influential figure.
He made clear he knows it Wednesday, reiterating his false claims of election fraud and demanding a leadership shake-up which led his former rival Biden to declare that a ‘mini-revolution’ was upending the Republican Party.
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Trump blasted party leaders who have publicly reprimanded him, including top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, or who voted to impeach him in January, most notably number three House Republican Liz Cheney who appears increasingly likely to face removal from her conference chairmanship.
‘Liz Cheney is a warmongering fool who has no business in Republican Party leadership,’ Trump said in a fervid statement, adding that he backs leaders who believe in his ‘Make America Great Again” movement.
New York Republican congresswoman ‘Elise Stefanik is a far superior choice, and she has my COMPLETE and TOTAL endorsement for GOP conference chair,’ he said.
Stefanik, a 36-year-old one-time moderate who went all-in for Trump during his presidency, voted against certifying the election results for Biden in multiple swing states.
Trump’s endorsement comes amid rising party tensions over Cheney, the most senior Republican woman in Congress, who has refused to tamp down her public denunciations of Trump.
And it all but assures that a conference-wide vote on whether to keep Cheney in the post will occur soon after lawmakers return to Washington next week.
Cheney, a third-term congresswoman from Wyoming, punched back at Trump in a new op-ed.
Her party was ‘at a turning point,‘ she wrote in The Washington Post, calling on fellow Republicans to ‘steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.’
‘History is watching,’ she added.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
