JFK's Grandson Jack Schlossberg Awards Liz Cheney Profile in Courage

Republican Liz Cheney was honored Sunday night with a JFK Profile in Courage Award — a distinction the Kennedy family said was for "courage that does not quit."

Jack Schlossberg — the youngest child of Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg, and the only grandson of JFK and Jackie Kennedy — delivered brief remarks at a Sunday ceremony before giving Cheney, 55, her award.

"In Profiles in Courage, my grandfather focused on the task of challenging your own party. Sometimes, it has to be done," Schlossberg, 29, said. "Congresswoman Cheney found herself there in 2020."

Noting that Cheney is a "life-long and committed conservative Republican," Schlossberg described how she was ostracized from her party after publicly rebuking Donald Trump for his false claims that the 2020 election was somehow "rigged" because he lost.

"In 2019, she became the highest-ranking Republican woman ever in the House. But when former President Trump and others attacked our democracy, Congresswoman Cheney put country before party and her own political interest," he said.

Schlossberg continued: "Her independent stand cost her her leadership position, key supporters, and she has faced countless threats and public attacks. But she has not wavered under pressure, serving now on the January 6th committee, and running for re-election back home."

Cheney, who was among five honorees for the 2022 awards, used her time at the podium to tell a story of the Kennedy family's impact on her own life and on her dad, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

On September 25, 1963, then President Kennedy came to Laramie, Wyoming, Cheney described, to speak to thousands of students.

"He told the students, 'I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade and in the decades to come to be of service to our country,' " Cheney said, adding: "One of the students who was there who was sitting high up in the rafters in the packed field house was my dad, 22-year-old Dick Cheney."

Years later, she added, her dad told her "he remembered rushing out of the back of the field house to watch President Kennedy's motorcade pull away."

Describing how JFK inspired so many people across party lines, Cheney got laughs from the audience when she joked, "I am tempted to stop here to say the moral of this story is if you don't like Dick Cheney's policies, you should blame John Kennedy."

Cheney — who was removed from the House Republicans' No. 3-ranking leadership role last year after she voted to impeach him for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building. — currently serves as vice chair of the bipartisan congressional committee investigating the attack.