Frank Eathorne spoke to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on his War Room Pandemic podcast, which was recently banned from YouTube, about Cheney’s decision.
“We need to focus on the fundamentals that’s been stated in this broadcast, and that is what Wyoming is,” Eathorne said.
“We are straight-talking, focused on the global scene, but we’re also focused at home.
“Many of these Western states have the ability to be self-reliant, and we’re keeping eyes on Texas too and their consideration of possible secession. Now, they have a different state constitution than we do as far as wording, but it is something that we’re all paying attention to.”
Eathorne later told Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune that the state Republican Party had not discussed secession in text messages to a journalist working at the newspaper.
“Only a brief conversation with the Texas GOP in earlier work with them,” Eathorne said. “Won’t come up again unless the grass roots brings it up.”
Eathorne reiterated these comments in a statement to Newsweek on Tuesday.
“My comment to Mr. Bannon was only in context to what the state of Texas is considering,” Eathorne said. “Look up Texas Republican Chairman’s letter, and legislators explaining the two year process. Secession is NOT a topic in Wyoming and will remain so unless the grassroots or government begins any discussions. My point is that some folks in Wyoming and other states are watching Texas.”
Allen West, chair of the Texas Republican Party, suggested on December 11 that the state could join a new union of “law-abiding states.” His statement came following the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a case aimed at challenging the results of the 2020 election. He was widely criticized at the time.
Cheney is the representative for Wyoming’s at-large congressional district, meaning she’s the state’s only member of the House of Representatives. Wyoming had a population of just under 579,000 as of 2019.
She currently serves as chair of the House Republican Conference but has faced calls to step down after her decision to vote for impeachment following the deadly Capitol riot. She was joined by nine other GOP members of Congress.
“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president,” Cheney said in a statement before the vote.
“The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not,” she said. The Wyoming GOP strongly rebuked Cheney for the decision.
There is broad agreement that states cannot legally secede from the United States and that the matter was settled by the Civil War. Supreme Court opinion also supports the idea that the union cannot be dissolved.
However, some fringe groups have maintained that Texas has a right to secede written into its constitution—this is widely disputed and regarded by many as a myth. There is, however, no similar suggestion about Wyoming.
“If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede,” the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in 2006.
This article has been updated to include comments from Frank Eathorne.
