Cheney: Trump is 'antithesis of everything Ronald Reagan stood for'
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) criticized President Trump’s positions on Russia, saying the current GOP leader has little in common with the revered Republican president who presided over the downfall of the Soviet Union.
“Trump - with his devotion to Putin, abandonment of Ukraine, and lies about history- is the antithesis of everything Ronald Reagan stood for,” Cheney, an outspoken Trump critic, said in a post on X on Wednesday.
“He is aligning America with the enemies of the very freedom that generations have fought and died to defend,” she continued.
Cheney’s sharp rebuke comes after Trump, on Tuesday, appeared to blame Ukraine’s leaders for the three-year war with Russia, saying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should have never started it.”
The war began in February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after massing troops on the border and demanding a ban on Ukraine ever joining the NATO alliance. The invasion of a democratic country marked the first on such a scale since World War II.
The remarks also come as Trump seeks to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. Last week, he spoke first with Putin about starting peace negotiations, then spoke with Zelensky. He has also talked about holding a face-to-face meeting with Putin in the near future.
And earlier on Tuesday, three senior Trump administration officials met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia to discuss mending relations between the two powers and ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting, which included neither Ukrainian nor European representatives, marked a dramatic shift in U.S.-Russia relations.
Cheney addressed, in particular, so-called “Reagan Republicans.”
“History will not be kind to those who are helping him,” Cheney said, about Trump, “especially those who call themselves Reagan Republicans while they pretend not to see what’s happening.”
Reagan famously called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and helped bring about the end of the Cold War.
National security adviser Mike Waltz, who was part of the U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, defended Trump’s position on Ukraine on Wednesday, describing his relationship with Zelensky as one “that's frustrated right now and clearly is going in the wrong direction.”
“But what President Trump is focused on is ending the fighting, going to a cease fire, and having a broader agreement. That started with this call with President Putin last week, he immediately had a call with President Zelensky. They have a term for this in diplomacy, called shuttle diplomacy,” Waltz said.
“I don't think anyone should be really, I don't know, criticizing the president for trying to drive this to a diplomatic solution,” he continued. “And what he said yesterday and today is why hasn't President Zelensky tried to end this war for the betterment of his country? And we have to ask ourselves, is Ukraine's position improving or not on the battlefield?”
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