Oath and Honor review: Liz Cheney spells out the threat from Trump

Donald Trump stands ready to knife US democracy. A year ago, he called for terminating the constitution. He has since announced that if re-elected, he wants to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies. He has suggested that Gen Mark Milley, former chairman of the joint chiefs, be executed for fulfilling his duty.

Related: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory review: Trump and his evangelical believers

This is a man who reportedly kept a bound copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, very nearly managed to overturn an election, and certainly basked in the mayhem of the January 6 insurrection. He said Mike Pence, his vice-president who ultimately stood against him, “deserved” to be hanged for so doing.

This week, Trump said he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second term. All bets are off. Take him literally and seriously.

The New York Times and the Atlantic report that Trump aims to make the executive branch his fiefdom, loyalty the primary if not only test. If he returns to power, the independence of the justice department and FBI will be things of the past. He is the “most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office”, Liz Cheney writes in her memoir.

“This is the story of when American democracy began to unravel,” the former congresswoman adds. “It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.”

Cheney, formerly the No 3 House Republican, was vice-chair of the House January 6 committee. She has witnessed power wielded – not always wisely. Dick Cheney, her father, was George W Bush’s vice-president and pushed the Iraq war. Before that he was secretary of defense to Bush’s father and, like his daughter, represented Wyoming in the House.

Liz Cheney delivers a frightening narrative. Her recollections are first-hand, her prose dry, terse and informed. On January 6, she witnessed Trump’s minions invade the Capitol first-hand.

Subtitled “A Memoir and a Warning Oath”, her book is well-timed. The presidential primaries draw near. The Iowa caucus is next month. Trump laps the Republican pack. No one comes close. Ron DeSantis is in retrograde, his campaign encased in a dunghill of its own making. Nikki Haley has momentum of a sort but remains a long way behind.

Cheney’s book will discomfit many. Mike Johnson, the new House speaker, is shown as a needy and servile fraud. Kevin McCarthy, his predecessor, is a bottomless pit of self-abasement. Jim Jordan, the hard-right judiciary chair from Ohio, is ham-handed and insincere.

Johnson misled colleagues about the authorship of a legal brief filed in support of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, as well as its contents and his own credentials. He played a game of “bait and switch”, Cheney says. Johnson, she writes, was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, despite advising colleagues that he was.

In reality, Johnson was dean of Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, a small Baptist institution that never opened its doors. Constitutional scholar? Nope. Pro-Trump lawyers wrote the pro-Trump brief, not Johnson, Cheney says.

At a recent gathering of Christian legislators, Johnson referred to himself as a modern-day Moses.

McCarthy, meanwhile, is vividly portrayed in all his gutless glory. First taking a pass on Johnson’s amicus brief, he then predictably caved. Anything to sit at the cool kids’ table. His tenure as speaker, which followed, will be remembered for its brevity and desperation. His trip to see Trump in Florida, shortly after the election, left Cheney incredulous.

“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?”

“They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”

Trump not eating. Let that claim sink in.

This year, at his arraignment in Fulton county, Georgia, on charges relating to election subversion there, the former president self-reported as 6ft 3in and 215lb – almost 30lb lighter than at his last White House physical.

OK.

Turning to Jordan, Cheney recalls his performance on January 6. She rightly feared for her safety and remains unamused.

“Jim Jordan approached me,” she recalls.

“‘We need to get the ladies off the aisle,’ he said, and put out his hand. ‘Let me help you.’”

“I swatted his hand away. ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’”

Jordan’s spokesperson denies the incident.

Cheney writes: “Most Republicans currently in Congress will do what Donald Trump asks, no matter what it is. I am very sad to say that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.”

Mitt Romney has announced his retirement as a senator from Utah. Patrick McHenry, the former acting House speaker from North Carolina, has also decided to quit. Both men voted to certify Joe Biden’s win in 2020. In a Trump-centric Republican party, that is a big problem. In plain English, Congress is a hellscape. The cold civil war grows hot.

Related: ‘Bait and switch’: Liz Cheney book tears into Mike Johnson over pro-Trump January 6 brief

Cheney briefly mentions Kash Patel, a former staffer to Devin Nunes, a congressman now in charge of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Patel was chief of staff at the Pentagon. In a recent interview with Steve Bannon, Patel made clear that in a second Trump term, bureaucrats and the press will be targets.

“We will find the conspirators in government … and the media,” Patel said. “Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media … we are putting you all on notice.”

Trump is a would-be Commodus, a debauched emperor, enamored with power, grievance and his own reflection. Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic, remains a movie for our times.

“As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term,” Cheney writes. “But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our constitution.” Promoting her book, she added that the US is “sleepwalking into dictatorship”.

Trump leads Biden in the polls.

• Oath and Honor is published in the US by Hachette