Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has represented Wyoming in the House since 2017, but Republicans in the staunchly conservative state have chastised her for being one of the former president’s most prominent critics in Congress. Her re-election chances plummeted this year after she became vice chairman of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill and voted to impeach Trump, defying the former president and Republican leaders. Cheney said she is now considering a run for president in 2024. “It’s something I’m thinking about and I’ll make a decision in the next few months,” she said in an interview with NBC Wednesday morning. After her loss on Tuesday, Cheney said she could win the primary but would require embracing Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies. “Our democracy relies on the goodwill of all those running for office to accept the election result,” he said. Cheney noted that Abraham Lincoln had lost congressional races before winning the presidency and went on to denounce “major elements” of her party who defended the Jan. 6 rioters and attacked false allegations about the FBI’s search of Trump’s home last week. “Poisonous lies destroy free nations,” he said. “Freedom must not, cannot, and will not die here.” Tuesday’s primary contests in Wyoming and Alaska were among the last before November’s midterm elections. They offered a test of Trump’s influence with Republican voters after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate and launched an investigation into his handling of classified national security documents. In Alaska, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who favors Trump and is running for the state’s only House seat, and incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is considered a moderate, both advanced to the November general election. A separate election, with Palin running to fill the House seat in the interim, following the death of longtime Rep. Don Young, had not been concluded. It will be decided in the coming days and weeks after the classification of votes in Alaska is completed under the ranked-choice voting system. Congressional candidates who have openly criticized Trump have struggled to win Republican primaries. Tom Rice of South Carolina, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington and Peter Meijer of Michigan — all of whom voted to impeach Trump over his conduct on Jan. 6 — lost their seats to candidates endorsed by the former president . Four others who voted to impeach Trump decided not to run, and only two survived the primaries. Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman was leading Cheney by nearly 30 percentage points in polls before the primary, leaving the former vice president’s daughter under no illusions about the outcome. “Today, regardless of the outcome, is certainly the beginning of a battle that will continue,” Cheney told CBS as she cast her vote Tuesday. “We are facing a moment where our democracy is truly under attack and threat. And those of us across the board — Republicans, Democrats and independents who believe deeply in freedom and who care about the Constitution and the future of the country — have an obligation to put that above party,” he added. After the Mar-a-Lago investigation, Hageman — who has also embraced Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results — defended the former president, calling the investigation a “political prosecution.” “If the FBI can treat a former President this way, imagine what it can do to the rest of us. It’s a two-tier system of justice — one for the elites and one for their political enemies,” Hageman tweeted. Even before Cheney’s defeat was predicted, Trump and his allies were jubilant. Taylor Budowitz, a Trump spokesman, posted a photo of Trump dancing on Twitter and wrote: “Bye Liz Cheney.”

Cheney said she was “ashamed to hear members of my own party attack the integrity of FBI agents,” criticizing the comments for putting “the lives of patriotic public servants at risk.” But most notably, in her latest quixotic pitch to Wyoming voters, she called on Americans to abandon the “Big Lie” perpetrated by Trump and his followers about the 2020 election. “America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country,” Cheney said in a short video posted on Twitter. Cheney will face an uphill battle to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, demanding that conservative voters turn their backs on Trump and Trumpism. In her role as vice chairwoman of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks, Cheney said evidence was mounting that Trump committed wrongdoing in connection with the Capitol attack and that the case for prosecution had grown stronger.