CODY, Wyoming — Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) criticized her congressional colleague, Rep. Liz Cheney, on Tuesday for accepting an appointment from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to join Democrats on the select committee to investigate the January 6 protest of the 2020 election.
“I was disappointed that she accepted that appointment,” Lummis told Breitbart News in an interview in Wyoming.
Cheney said Thursday she was “honored” to accept a position on the committee from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Those who are responsible for the attack need to be held accountable and this select committee will fulfill that responsibility in a professional, expeditious, and non-partisan manner,” she wrote in a statement.
But Lummis suggested the investigative committee would be another partisan attempt by Democrats to wield political power against former President Donald Trump.
“This is a very partisan aligned group,” she said, pointing to some of the other Democrat members on the committee. “Adam Schiff, who has repeatedly lied in vicious ways about the former president, is on that commission.”
Cheney faces a tough reelection fight in 2022 for her congressional seat, experiencing strong backlash from Wyoming Trump supporters for repeatedly trying to force the former president out of the political future of the party.
Lummis said she spoke with Cheney about a month ago at an event with political figures and said it was up to Wyoming voters to decide her political fate.
“Obviously she and I disagree about the issues that she’s so frequently in the news about,” she said. “And she and her constituents in Wyoming can have a discussion about that, and I’m sure the people of Wyoming will make a decision.”
Lummis said the Republican party should unite and focus on the former president’s policies, which she described as “good for Wyoming and good for America.”
Policies like Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” strategy to reduce the flow of migrants crossing into the United States, she said, were working well before Biden reversed them.
“I’m sorry the Biden administration didn’t keep it,” she said, referring to the “Remain in Mexico” policy. “Sometimes it seems that they cast policies aside that were working simply because they were implemented by President Trump and they hated him so much.”
Trump’s economic policies, she added, made life better for every ethnic group, every race, and both genders, while President Joe Biden was pursuing a more “socialist” agenda.
“They are very, so far in the Biden administration, into listening to the socialist wing of their party, that I think they are scaring people in their own party. They’re certainly scaring people in the Republican party — me included,” she said. “We need to fight vigorously against their desire to spend $6 trillion on a grab bag of socialist ideas.”
Lummis said she looked forward to fighting for Republicans in 2022 and working to end the Democrat majorities in Congress.
“The American people are awake to what the Democrats are espousing and trying to push and they don’t like it,” she said. “And so we need to remind people of how seriously this nation would change in the future if we continue to allow Democrats to be the majority.”
A Wyoming rancher, Lummis served as the lone member of Congress for Wyoming for four terms and retired in 2016 rather than seek a fifth term.
She was elected in Wyoming in 2020 to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, becoming the first woman U.S. senator to represent the state.
Before Lummis was even sworn into office, she immediately teamed up with Senate Republicans to campaign for Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) in the Georgia runoff election.
Despite Republicans failing to keep the Senate majority in 2020, Lummis said she looked forward to continuing the fight in 2022.
“Our country is not on track,” she said criticizing Biden’s agenda. “You can point to January 20th as the date when our country fell off the rails.”