The only woman truly afraid of Donald Trump, British poet Benjamin Zephaniah, has died

No, Nikki Haley cannot be a threat to Donald Trump. The former UN ambassador can score points in the primaries against her competition, which has now shrunk to three people. However, these events are not even folklore anymore, they have become meaningless.

The fact that Haley has recently made friends and a lot of money on Wall Street and that the circle of clients around Charles Koch has pledged their support to her does not matter to her either. Yes, it actually hurts her: Trump can now tell her that she is dependent on the liberal elite and corrupt money bags.

The danger to Trump comes from a completely different place, namely Liz Cheney. Since the ex-president denied his election defeat and even tried to stage a coup on January 6, 2021, he has been under constant fire from the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

That was anything but predictable: Liz Cheney explicitly supported Trump in 2016. She voted almost 100 percent with him in the House of Representatives, and like her father – whom she admires uncritically – she is conservative to the core. At the same time, she was the dominant woman in the Grand Old Party (GOP) until two years ago. She was number three and had direct access to everything big in Washington.

But now Cheney has sacrificed her political career to fight Trump and just published a book called “Oath and Honor.” It’s a brutal reckoning with the former president and his sycophants in the Republican Party — and it’s about to become a bestseller. It’s topping the Amazon charts and the first edition is already sold out.

As conservative as Cheney is, she is also convinced of democracy and the rule of law. She has acknowledged that the ex-president is a threat to both. “Because Donald Trump still has a tight grip on the Republican Party, I think our democracy is in danger because of Donald Trump,” she said. “Democracy is also exposed to major risks internationally.”

Cheney is currently a guest on every American TV show except Fox News. She continually repeats her core message: “We have a choice, either the Constitution – or Trump.”

The big lie after Trump’s election defeat was an eye-opener for Cheney. She witnessed in real time as the ex-president and his aides tried to turn election defeat into victory and realized how close they had come to achieving their goal. The fake electoral votes had already been collected and the unauthorized voters were ready. If Mike Pence had not proven his resolve on January 6, the coup would have succeeded and plunged the United States into a constitutional crisis with unforeseeable consequences.

Cheney underlines her message with understandable details. For example, she describes how Kevin McCarthy – then the Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives – told her that he had made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago two weeks after the storming of the Capitol out of concern for Trump’s health. “He doesn’t eat anything anymore,” McCarthy said as the reason for his embarrassing Canossa walk. This probably puts him at the top of the list of the most absurd excuses of all time.

Cheney shows how far the Republican Party has strayed from its values ​​with a series of anecdotes, such as the following: Unwilling to submit to the Big Lie, her former Republican colleagues accused her of betraying the party. Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania state representative, even yelled at her, “You’re acting like a football player’s girlfriend sitting with the opposing fans at his biggest game.” Cheney then had to gently reprimand him: “Mike, I’m not your girlfriend.”

Meanwhile, Cheney has become a pariah within the Republican Party. A year ago, she was eliminated in the primaries in the state of Wyoming against a competitor loyal to Trump. But what she has lost in political power, she has gained in reputation. Even liberal politicians and journalists who crossed themselves years ago when they saw her now pay respect to her.

Cheney cannot stop Trump from winning the Republican primaries by a landslide. However, in the match against Joe Biden, she can tip the balance. Her message resonates with women in the suburbs, and those voices will help determine whether she wins or loses in November.

Liz Cheney jumps over her shadow and for once argues for voting for the Democrats because Trump aims for an authoritarian regime along the lines of Vladimir Putin or Viktor Orbán. Even a blind person with a stick can now see this. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, the ex-president responded this way to the question of whether he wanted a dictatorship: “Yes, but only for one day.”

You’d have to be very naive to see this as a joke, no matter how bad it is.