George Conway says GOP lawmakers ‘trying to memory hole’ Capitol insurrection

Conservative lawyer George Conway said Wednesday that GOP lawmakers are “trying to memory hole” the US Capitol insurrection, after House Republicans voted to oust Liz Cheney from their leadership ranks.

Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360,” Conway — the husband of former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway — said the party is “trying to memory hole everything that’s happened. They’re trying to memory hole what happened on January 6. And they’re getting rid of Liz Cheney because she won’t let them do that. And there’s good reason for her to not let them do that.”

The term “memory hole” refers to a device in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in which information that is no longer convenient to the ruling party is disposed of.

Cheney lost her post as the No. 3 House Republican on Wednesday morning after publicly rejecting for months former President Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 presidential election. The conference is expected to replace her with Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who has a less conservative voting record than Cheney but has emerged as one of Trump’s top defenders.

Cheney did not back down in a speech before the vote, calling out Trump and other Republicans who aided his efforts to overturn his loss and charging that she would lead “the fight to restore our party and our nation to conservative principles.”

When Cheney criticized Trump in her remarks, she was booed by some of her colleagues, according to a House member in the room. That loyalty to the former President was also on display during a House Oversight Committee hearing about the insurrection later Wednesday, where Republican lawmakers attempted to deny even basic facts about the attack.

“It’s just a complete and utter disgrace. These people all know better,” Conway said.

“They lived through this. And they saw the violence up close. They were the ones who had to hide in the basement of the Capitol building out of fear of being assaulted. And for them to pretend that it didn’t happen and that these people who were breaking and entering and assaulting police officers were simply acting like normal tourists on a walk on the Mall is just too much to bear.”

Asked about the future of the Republican Party, Conway bluntly said he doesn’t hold “much hope” for the GOP “in its current form.”

“The big lie has taken hold,” he said. “The desire to adhere to the big lie, not just by members of Congress and by the former President but by individual members of the Republican Party throughout the nation, is increasingly disturbing.”