LIZ CHENEY: It's not partisan. Don't vote for candidates who are election deniers

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an edited transcript of highlights of comments from U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyoming) during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. You can watch her interview with host Chuck Todd here and read the full transcript here.

No one of any party should be voting for people who are election deniers.

We have to be clear what it means to be an election denier. It means in the case, for example, of Kari Lake and Mark Finchem in Arizona, they have both said:

"We've looked at all of the facts. We've looked at the results of the election in 2020. We've looked at the law. We've looked at the fact that the courts all ruled against Donald Trump.  We've looked at the audits and the recounts.  We are willing to ignore all of that, and we are saying we would not have certified that election."

They're telling you that they'll only certify an election they agree with. There's not much graver threat to the democracy than you can imagine than that.

Nobody should be out advocating for the election of people who will not honor the sanctity of our elections process. People who do that are in fact putting politics ahead of the Constitution and ahead of the country.

Everybody has an obligation to defend the Constitution -- an obligation to do what's right. Right now you've got a lot of Republicans in particular -- Democrats do the same thing it just happens that our candidates are more dangerous right now. But you have got a lot of Republicans who are saying: "You know what? I'm going to ignore the threat posed by the former president who attempted to use force to stop (and) overturn an election, to stop the count of electoral votes. I'm going to ignore that. I'm going to ignore these people who embrace him.  I'm going to ignore the danger, and I'm just going to focus on the near term: Is the Republican Party going to prevail?"

The people who are excusing and appeasing and enabling are also responsible for the impact of that. Words matter. When you support and endorse somebody who said that they only will honor results if they win, then you are responsible and accountable for that.

The idea that we could simply ignore Donald Trump and the threat would go away is clearly wrong. I think that (Senate) Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and (House) Leader (Kevin) McCarthy (R- California) obviously have taken slightly different approaches to Donald Trump. Leader McCarthy is embracing him. Leader McConnell has thought we can ignore him and go forward as a party without him continuing to have power and authority.

That's clearly not the case. My view from the beginning has been we have to, as a party, reject insurrection. We have to reject what he stands for. I don't think this is an issue about which you can make a political calculation.

At every moment since the aftermath of the election in 2020, when Minority Leader McCarthy has had the opportunity to do the right thing, or do something that serves his own political purpose, he always chooses to serve his own political purpose.

That extends to what we've seen just in the last few days with these comments about aid to Ukraine. The idea that somehow the party is now no longer going to support the Ukrainian people -- which for somebody who has a picture of Ronald Reagan on the wall of his office in the Capitol -- the notion that now Kevin McCarthy is going to make himself the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is just a stunning thing. It's dangerous. The fact that he's willing to go down the path of suggesting that America will no longer stand for freedom tells you he's willing to sacrifice everything for his own political gain.

When Kevin McCarthy suggests that the Republicans are not going to support aid to Ukraine that is incredibly damaging to America's standing in the world. It's damaging to the effort that Ukrainians are engaged in. We need to demonstrate that the United States of America recognizes we have to be a leader in the world. We're not going to go back to the days of isolationism, which has been a threat in this country, you know, ever since the end of World War II.

I'm a conservative. I voted with him (former President Trump) 93% of the time. But I think that there's no question that his election as president in 2016 began something that's been very dangerous for this nation.

One thing that you can absolutely count on is that there are tens of millions of Americans who will do everything we need to do to make sure Donald Trump is never the president again. The threat that he poses is too great. He's demonstrated his willingness to use force to attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power. There are simply many, many millions more Americans who, despite any party affiliation, understand how dangerous that is and will make sure he's never in the Oval Office again.

As people go in to vote, they need to recognize that there are certain candidates who are anti-democracy. They need to recognize that election deniers are anti-democracy, and they should not vote for those people.

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