Melina Mara/The Washington Post via AP, Pool
- GOP Rep. Ken Buck accused his party of "canceling" Rep. Liz Cheney for "speaking her mind" after House Republicans voted to oust her from leadership.
- "Liz Cheney was canceled today for speaking her mind and disagreeing with the narrative that President Trump was putting forward," Buck told reporters.
- Buck added that he's spoken to many GOP voters who don't approve of Trump's lies about the election.
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Rep. Ken Buck, a conservative Colorado Republican, accused his party of "canceling" Rep. Liz Cheney for "speaking her mind" after House Republicans voted to oust her from leadership on Wednesday.
"Liz Cheney was canceled today for speaking her mind and disagreeing with the narrative that President Trump was putting forward," Buck told reporters shortly after he voted against Cheney's removal. He argued that the Republican party should welcome debate and disagreement in its ranks.
Buck added that he's spoken to many GOP voters who will punish the party in the midterm elections for promoting former President Donald Trump's election lies.
"To suggest that the American people in 2022 won't consider the fact that we were unwilling to stand up to a narrative that the election was stolen, I think will be taken into consideration with their vote," he said.
A member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, Buck was one of just a handful of House Republicans who've publicly supported Cheney as the party retaliated against her for condemning Trump and rejecting the GOP's lies about the 2020 election.
Buck told reporters that he doesn't support Rep. Elise Stefanik, Cheney's likely replacement, because she's "liberal." He was the only member of the House GOP to stay in the chamber and watch Cheney deliver a defiant floor speech on Tuesday night defending her position.
Like many of his GOP colleagues, Buck has repeatedly railed against the so-called cancel culture targeting conservatives, which he warns will lead to "replacement culture."
"Cancel culture is a dangerous phenomenon, the total silencing and erasing of people and truths the progressives dislike," Buck said in a recent speech on the House floor.
Other Republicans who supported Cheney's ouster have argued that the party isn't silencing her, but removing her from leadership in order to unite the caucus and streamline its message. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said in a statement backing Cheney's removal earlier this week that "unlike the left," Republicans "embrace free thought and debate."
-Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurns) May 12, 2021
Democrats also slammed the GOP for ousting Cheney from its leadership ranks.
"It's truly a dangerous, dangerous sign of our times that the price of admission in today's Republican Party is silence in the face of provable lies," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a floor speech on Wednesday.