In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the Constitution: they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face.
A mostly straightforward, occasionally repetitive, literarily undistinguished account of that investigation as well as its antecedents and aftermath. It oozes contempt toward Cheney’s former colleagues ... The book falls short of being a classic memoir — or for that matter an engaging read. Its emotional tone rarely veers beyond strident anger and self-righteousness, however well-earned ... Is Oath and Honor, with its justified outrage and self-mythologizing tone, actually a thinly veiled campaign biography?
Cheney offers scathing portraits of colleagues she holds in utter contempt ... Shows how deeply enmeshed Liz Cheney remains in that world, and how much she still embraces its assumptions ... Neither does Cheney seriously address her part during Trump’s first impeachment, beginning in 2019, when she stridently sided with Trump and her GOP colleagues in the House.
Not without its evasions. What makes Trump memoirs so fascinating (and I’ve read a lot) is the many varieties of self-deception they exhibit ... The base haunts Oath and Honor. It’s the boogeyman under the bed that Cheney can barely bring herself to mention, let alone scrutinize ... This understanding has come awfully late. If only she and the rest of her party had woken up sooner.
