Matthew Giffin, reporter at The Tennessee Star and student at Middle Tennessee State University, joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss former Wyoming U.S. Representative Liz Cheney’s appearance at an event at Vanderbilt University this week.
On Tuesday, Cheney joined Jon Meacham, former MSNBC contributor and current co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, for an event titled “Defending Our Democracy” where the pair discussed Cheney’s work on the January 6th Committee and the “health of democracy and the presidency.”
Giffin, who attended the event, said the audience was “crowded with a lot of like-minded liberals,” as the conversation focused on Cheney’s pronouncements that “democracy is under threat.”
“It was a lot of self congratulating and a lot of complimenting on the part of Meacham to Liz Cheney, who served on the committee investigating January 6th, and her endless pronouncements that democracy is under threat, and the two agreed that, if you are a part of the cohort of people that support the former president, President Donald Trump, then you are a part of a personality cult. All while being a part of this event that supposedly is about unity and American democracy and protecting those values,” Giffin said.
“Just about after every few sentences, there would be a breakout of applause after Cheney or Meacham said something, anything condemning the former president or or the Republican Party in general. It was a rather polarizing event for something that was ultimately supposedly about unity,” Giffin added.
Having attended the event under the impression Cheney and Meacham would take questions from the audience, Giffin said the pair showed “no interest in real discussion or participation from the audience,” as “nobody was allowed to comment or participate in discussion or ask questions.”
“The event sort of ended, the lights went off, and everybody started just leaving the room as fast as they could. They quickly were ushered off the stage and it was over,” Giffin said.
If given the opportunity, Giffin said he would have asked Cheney and Meacham, “Why do you two both consistently and repeatedly just insist on demonizing and demeaning and patronizing former supporters of former President Donald Trump, which is about half the country, when the both of you purport to be advocates of unity and bipartisanship and American democracy and ‘conversation and discussion’?”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
