- Cheney says she favors serving with national security-minded female Democrats over MTG and Boebert.
- The GOP lawmaker told the NYT she was well aware of the ideological differences the women tackle.
- "They are people that are trying to do the right thing for the country," she told the newspaper.
Rep. Liz Cheney quickly rose through the ranks of GOP politics upon arriving on Capitol Hill in 2017, eventually becoming the No. 3 House Republican just two years into her congressional tenure.
After she was removed from her position in May 2021 for continually rejecting former President Donald Trump's claims regarding the 2020 election, Cheney became the face of a wing of the GOP that is still decidedly conservative but untethered to the former president.
Cheney's work on the House committee investigating the Capitol riot has reflected her willingness to cooperate with Democratic lawmakers in spite of ideological differences. In a recent interview with The New York Times, the Wyoming lawmaker expressed a preference for working with prominent female Democratic lawmakers with national security backgrounds versus controversial Republican congresswomen serving in the lower chamber.
"I would much rather serve with Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan and Elissa Slotkin than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, even though on substance certainly I have big disagreements with the Democratic women I just mentioned," she told the newspaper.
"But they love this country, they do their homework and they are people that are trying to do the right thing for the country," she added.
Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and ex-federal prosecutor, was first elected to the House from a suburban New Jersey district in 2018. Houlahan, a former Air Force officer representing a congressional district in the Philadelphia suburbs, was also elected in 2018, while Slotkin, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, was elected to a district outside Detroit that year.
Meanwhile, Greene and Boebert, Republican women who represent districts in Georgia and Colorado, respectively, are some of the most high-profile GOP freshmen in their caucus. Both women have become nationally known figures for railing against Democratic policies and aligning themselves with MAGA-aligned groups that are deeply supportive of former President Donald Trump.
Cheney, who was opposed to US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, has a deep foreign policy background.
The congresswoman was a deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs while her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, served under George W. Bush. She also served as a principal deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East during the second Bush administration.
She's also a staunch backer of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and has been highly critical of Republicans who have aligned themselves with figures sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin, deriding them as the "Putin wing of the GOP."