Liz Cheney says Mike Pence was 'essentially the president' on January 6 as Trump refused to send reprieve

In one of her first speeches since her primary defeat last month, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney delivered a stinging indictment of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Cheney warned that America's freedom is in danger and urged the country to hold Trump accountable for his role in the Capitol riot.

As the top Republican on the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection, Cheney has long been one of the few outspoken GOP critics of Trump, a stance that ultimately cost her her congressional seat.

On January 6, 2021, Cheney chose to rebuke Trump's actions, instead of dwelling on her political troubles.

She said she hoped everyone heard the testimony in the select committee hearings of Pat Cipollone. According to testimony, the only person who wouldn't respond to desperate calls for help was President Trump. He didn't want to help them.

Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was one of several witnesses who told the committee that they were puzzled by Trump's lack of action during the riots.

Cheney said in her speech that Trump's second-in-command, Mike Pence, stepped into his superior's role.

She said that if you watched the hearings closely, you would know that Vice President Mike Pence was in charge for most of the day. Every other Republican and Democratic leader in Washington was aware of it.

Rioters in the Capitol began chanting "hang Mike Pence" after Trump criticized the vice president on social media. Hutchinson testified earlier this summer that Trump defended the insurrectionists' call for violence.

In his new book, "So Help Me God," he wrote that he was angry but not afraid during the events of January 6.

"I was angry at what I saw, how it disrespected the seat of our democracy and disrespected the patriotism of millions of our supporters, who would never do such a thing here or anywhere else," the vice president wrote.

According to "The Divider," a new book by Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, Donald Trump has said he won't pick Mike Pence as his running mate if he runs for president in four years.

According to the book, Trump said he wouldn't pick Pence as his running mate.

In her speech, Cheney urged people to rewatch testimony from the committee's summer hearings and listen to what several of Trump's former officials said about the president's post-2020 actions.

She asked, "How could Trump's refusal to act, his betrayal or our Constitution, of our principles, come with no cost?"