Will Liz Cheney Run for President? Wyoming Republican Says She's 'Thinking About It' After Primary Loss

It didn't take long for the question to come up: Will Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost the Republican primary in Wyoming Tuesday, run for president?

That's what Savannah Guthrie asked Wednesday morning on Today, hours after Cheney — the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee and arguably the highest-profile Republican adversary of the former president — vowed in her concession speech to "do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never anywhere near the Oval Office."

After initially avoiding a direct answer, Cheney, when pressed, said, "That's a decision that I'm going to make in the coming months, and I'm not going to make any announcements here this morning — but it is something that I am thinking about."

In conceding the race to her opponent, attorney Harriet Hageman, Cheney told supporters in Jackson, Wyo., Tuesday night, "This primary election is over. And now the real work begins."

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Cheney spoke of Republican President Abraham Lincoln as "the great and original champion of our party" who "was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of them all."

"Lincoln ultimately prevailed," Cheney said. "He saved our union, and he defined our obligated as Americans for all of history."

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On Wednesday morning, Cheney acknowledged the challenges of operating in a party that has cast her aside.

"We've now got one major political party, my party, which has really become a cult of personality, and we've got to get this party back to a place where we're embracing the values and the principles on which it was founded," Cheney told Guthrie.

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Later during the interview, Cheney added: "The Republican Party today is in very bad shape. And I think that we have a tremendous amount of work to do. I think that it could take several election cycles, but the country has got to have a Republican Party that's actually based on substance, based on principles."

Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

That, Cheney said, means rejecting Trump's "big lie" about the 2020 presidential election, which has become a political issue in national, statewide and local GOP races across the U.S.

"I don't think that anybody in any political party should support election deniers. That's true here in Wyoming and it's true all across the country," Cheney said. "It's simply too dangerous to elect somebody as governor who will refuse to certify votes unless it meets their own political preference, to elect people as secretaries of state who will refuse to count legitimate votes, to elect members of Congress who refuse to accept the outcome of the last election. I think that is a red line. I don't think anybody should be supporting those people."

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That, however, is not what happened in Wyoming, where Hageman, who was endorsed by Trump and has said the last election was "rigged," beat Cheney by more than 30 points.

Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Rep. Liz Cheney

"We have to make sure that we are fighting against every single election denier," Cheney continued. "The election deniers right now are Republicans and I think that it shouldn't matter what party you are, nobody should be voting for those people, supporting them or backing them."

Cheney delivered her speech Tuesday at a cattle ranch from a stage with mountains in the background, invoking Lincoln as well as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant "and all who fought in our nation's tragic Civil War, including my own great-great-grandfathers."

"Their courage saved freedom, and if we listen closely, they are speaking to us down through generations," she said. "We must not idly squander what so many have fought and died for."

"As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic," she said in closing her defiant, forward-looking speech. "They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom. There is no greater power on this earth, and with God's help, we will prevail."