WASHINGTON – Republican leaders insisted that purging Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney from their ranks was necessary to unify the party ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
But former President Donald Trump, who celebrated Cheney's ouster by calling her a “bitter, horrible human being,” has made clear he has no interest in putting the hostilities behind him as he continues to seek vengeance and lie about the 2020 election. “Whatever the rest of the country thinks or whatever his opponents in the news media think, he believes that he lost the White House illegitimately, and that’s a pretty big grudge, so I don't think he's going to give up that sense of grievance very easily,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a longtime Trump friend