“Republicans blame Liz Cheney for dividing the GOP, saying she’s preventing the party from having a unified message and from focusing on the 2022 midterms. ‘Combating Joe Biden… That’s the message we should be talking about. I haven’t heard members concerned about [Cheney’s] vote on impeachment, it’s more concerned about the job ability to do and what’s our best step forward that we can all work together instead of attacking one another,’ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on ‘Fox’ this week. But Liz Cheney isn’t the one searching for bamboo fibers in Arizona, or blaming Mike Pence for losing the White House, or pointing the finger at Mitch McConnell over losing control of the U.S. Senate or still insisting the GOP won the 2020 presidential election. That person is Donald Trump. We’ve written a lot about how Trump continues to drive and influence the Republican Party, despite no longer holding office, despite declining poll numbers and despite no longer holding social-media megaphones on Facebook and Twitter.”

“But this week appears to represent the party’s 100 percent surrender to Trump, a surrender to his lie that he won the 2020 election, and a surrender to his insistence that all GOP critics must be purged. And as we said earlier this week, it’s an ominous development for democracy when the people who are paying a political price are the ones who have told the truth about the 2020 election, who did their jobs in administering the election and who remain haunted by what happened on Jan. 6. The person who still hasn’t paid a price – even after losing office, even after a second impeachment – is the former president” – NBC News.