Donald Trump Rages at Liz Cheney Over Book Claims

Donald Trump has torn into Liz Cheney over claims made in her new book about his reaction to the 2020 election.

The former Republican Rep. for Wyoming at-large and anti-Trump Republican has written an upcoming memoir Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. In it, she criticizes the former president and other erstwhile Republican colleagues.

Among her claims is that Trump became depressed and stopped eating after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, prompting Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy to visit him. Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump and McCarthy via email to comment on this story.

Cheney said she asked McCarthy why he visited Trump in his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, three weeks after the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. That was the day when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election. McCarthy allegedly told Cheney that Trump's staff were concerned about him.

"They're really worried," McCarthy allegedly said as per excerpts published by CNN last week. "Trump's not eating, so they asked me to come see him."

"What?" Cheney replied. "You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump's not eating?"

"Yeah, he's really depressed," McCarthy said.

However, Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP primaries, challenged these claims in a post on Truth Social.

He wrote: "Crazy Liz Cheney, who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome at a level rarely seen before, writes in her boring new book that Keven [sic] McCarthy said he came to Mar-a-Lago after the RIGGED election because, 'the former president was depressed and not eating.'

"That statement is not true. I was not depressed, I WAS ANGRY, and it was not that I was not eating, it was that I was eating too much. But that's not why Keven [sic] McCarthy was there. He was at Mar-a-Lago to get my support, and to bring the Republican Party together - Only good intentions," Trump added.

"Liz Cheney, on the other hand, went on to lose her seat in Congress by the largest margin for a sitting Congressperson in the history of the U.S. She then worked with others on the J6 Committee to delete and destroy the evidence and findings of the committee."

Cheney was one of the two Republicans in the House in the January 6 Select Committee and was among those who voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol attack. This triggered a backlash by her party, and she lost her seat a year later to now-Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman.

In a general press statement, McCarthy's office implied Cheney was deranged, saying: '"For Cheney, first it was Trump Derangement Syndrome, and now apparently it's also McCarthy Derangement Syndrome."

Meanwhile, reacting to Cheney's book, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, told Newsweek in a previous statement via email: "Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper.

"These are nothing more than completely fabricated stories because President Trump is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican nominee and the strongest candidate to beat Crooked Joe Biden. Liz clearly suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome and needs to address the underlying issues in her own personal life," Cheung added.

In Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning which will be released on December, 5, Cheney also issued a warning about Trump, saying he will "terminate the constitution."

"We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic," Cheney wrote of the 2024 presidential election. "As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution."

Trump at the moment faces three lawsuits filed by Capitol police officers and members of Congress over the January 6 riot. The lawsuits allege that Trump's claims of widespread election fraud, which have not been substantiated, as well as his speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally earlier on January 6, helped incite the mob of his supporters to violence. The former president denies any wrongdoing and has repeatedly said the accusations are part of a political witch hunt.