It’s been quite some time since I watched my ex-cable news wife’s show. I broke up with her during the pandemic over all the theatrical sighing and Chicken Littling, but last night’s show with Liz Cheney was must see teevee. Hey, if Maddow can spend the first half of the show talking about herself, I can do likewise.

I’ll be writing more about the atmospherics of the interview than the details: you can watch it online or get the details elsewhere. As always, I’m more interested in the big picture. The details *do* matter but my goal as a pundit is not to get lost in the weeds. That’s why I would have made a lousy corporate lawyer.

I doubt if any viewers of TRMS were unaware that Rachel Maddow and Liz Cheney have only one thing in common: a belief that a second Trump term would be even more disastrous than the first. There were people in that administration who were willing to risk the wrath of the Kaiser of Chaos and thwart his worst impulses. Team Trump plans to conduct sycophancy tests for appointees if there’s a second term; another reason it must never happen.

I, for one, have no problem with calling a cease fire with those on the right who consider the Indicted Impeached Insult Comedian to be the plague on two legs. It’s how the United States won World War II. FDR had nothing in common with Stalin except opposition to the Hitler menace. That was enough for that alliance.

FDR had more in common with Churchill, but they had major differences over the war’s end game. Churchill wanted to preserve the British Empire. FDR knew it was only a matter of time before colonialism would be consigned to the dustbin of history. Apologies for the cliche. Does anyone know where the dustbin of history is located?

I defended the unlikely alliance between liberals and the daughter of a man who we universally despise in a 2022 post, Why Liz Cheney Matters. We don’t have to like her, but I respect her moxie. Cheney was wrong about the Kaiser of Chaos until right before the Dipshit Insurrection. But when a Cheney flips, they flip hard.

Maddow looked a bit tense at the start of the show, but her monologue seemed to put her at ease. But people who are born to power tend to be at ease when on public display. That’s the case with Cheney who even cocks her head in the same way as her father.

I learned to respect Cheney’s rhetorical skills during the J6 hearings. She’s tough and blunt. Tough times call for bluntness.

Most of the interview involved warnings about the threat to democracy posed by the Trumpified GOP. Cheney tends to refer to “the republic” or “the constitution” instead of using the D word. I’ll act as translator: That’s conservative speak for democracy.

The interview and Cheney’s book break some new ground by focusing on the Accidental Speaker, Mike Johnson:

“She called the prospect of Speaker Mike Johnson still maintaining control of the House of Representatives following the 2024 election “terrifying.”

“I say that with no pleasure. It pains me that that’s where we are,” Cheney said.

She noted that she’d been friends with Johnson.

“We were elected the same year, our offices were next door to each other, and I believed Mike to be a man of principle,” Cheney added.

But that belief didn’t last.

“What I learned was he was willing to do things he knew to be wrong in order to placate Donald Trump,” Cheney continued. “And again, a situation where you have a Speaker of the House, who … so clearly set aside what he knew to be the facts, what he knew to be the law, what he knew to be our obligations under the Constitution in order to try to help Donald Trump in his efforts in 2020.”

In the immortal words of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda:

Even horror movie actors are worried about the double-barreled threat of a Johnson speakership and Trumpist dictatorship. It might be fun to screen Glen or Glenda for Mike Johnson. He’d probably react like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange:

Enough with the movie analogies, back to our political Odd Couple. It’s an imperfect analogy because neither Maddow nor Cheney is an Oscar, but the latter has some of his ease. Maddow is all Felix complete with nervous gestures and the like. In spirit, they’re closer to the Lemmon-Matthau Odd Couple:

I’m pretty sure Maddow would threaten Cheney with a ladle if she backslides on Trumpism. Sooner or ladle they’re bound to argue…

This image from the Randall-Klugman Odd Couple sums up the state of the republic before the 2024 election:

It’s time to free America from its Trumpist bonds and work together to keep the GOP out of power in 2024. If Rachel Maddow and Liz Cheney can bury the hatchet, so can we all.

Repeat after me: The rule of law is on the ballot in 2024.

The last word goes to Billy May & his Orchestra:

UPDATE: I rarely delete comments, I can take a punch. I did, however, delete one using the C word to describe Cheney. I don’t much like her either BUT I dislike misogyny and sexism more. Hence the deletion.