Former vice president Dick Cheney, who was George W. Bush\u2019s No. 2 and served in other Republican administrations, will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, he said in a statement Friday \u2014 marking a remarkable historic moment and one of the most significant defections to the Democratic nominee from the opposing party two months before Election Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our nation\u2019s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,\u201d Cheney said in his endorsement, which confirmed remarks his daughter had made hours earlier. \u201cHe tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheney said he was voting for Harris to fulfill his civic duty to \u201cput country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.\u201d The remarks that seemed designed to persuade other conservatives \u2014 and, particularly, those who have held positions of influence \u2014 to similarly back a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time.<\/p>\n
Cheney\u2019s statement makes him the highest-profile Republican to actively support Harris, at a time when many in Trump\u2019s party have expressed private and public reservations about him but have stopped short of using their positions to advocate for his opponent. It also puts the spotlight on other Republicans who have not already endorsed Trump or Harris, including former president George W. Bush, former vice president Mike Pence, former White House chief of staff John Kelly and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the GOP presidential candidate in 2012.<\/p>\n
Each has warned publicly or privately about the threat they believe Trump represents but have not taken the additional step of backing Harris.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s campaign has been wooing Republican voters in recent weeks, aiming to blunt attacks from Trump assailing her as aggressively liberal and a \u201ccommunist.\u201d While the strategy is not without risk \u2014 as some Democrats continue to maintain a disdain for Cheney dating back to his time as a pugilistic vice president and outspoken advocate for the Iraq War during Bush\u2019s presidency \u2014 Harris\u2019s allies sought to cast the former vice president\u2019s endorsement as part of a broader trend of Republicans putting policy differences aside to unite behind defeating Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Vice President is proud to have the support of Vice President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party,\u201d Harris campaign chair Jen O\u2019Malley Dillon said in a statement Friday. \u201cHe joins hundreds of Republicans who are backing the Vice President and her patriotic vision of America over former President Trump, because, as Vice President Cheney said, the very future of our republic is at stake in this election.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris herself did not immediately comment on the Cheney endorsement, which some Democratic strategists saw as part of a delicate balancing act her campaign is carrying out as it courts Republicans while also seeking to keep the Democratic base unified.<\/p>\n
Trump responded to the endorsement by attacking Cheney as an \u201cirrelevant RINO,\u201d using an acronym for \u201cRepublican in Name Only.\u201d He also called Cheney out over his support for the Iraq War, which in hindsight has become one of the most unpopular initiatives of the Bush-Cheney administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris,\u201d the former president wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. \u201cI am the Peace President, and only I will stop World War III!\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump went on to attack Cheney\u2019s daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), over her role in helping to lead the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which she accused Trump of inciting.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Texas on Friday afternoon, Cheney had said her father would join her in supporting Harris in her race against Republican nominee Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cDick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,\u201d she said at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.<\/p>\n
Liz Cheney, who lost reelection in 2022 to a Trump-backed primary challenger, announced Wednesday that she will vote for Harris.<\/p>\n
Her father, who served as vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, endorsed Trump when he first ran for president in 2016. But he grew critical of Trump, especially after the Jan. 6 attack, and appeared in primary ads for his daughter where he called Trump a \u201ccoward\u201d and a \u201cthreat to our republic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist, said Cheney\u2019s endorsement of Harris highlighted how Democrats will probably need to get comfortable with \u201cstrange bedfellows\u201d to defeat Trump \u2014 something that may require linking arms with people they once despised.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about Dick and Liz Cheney expressing agreement with Kamala Harris on individual issues and vice versa,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is about a statement of no confidence in Donald Trump from the Cheneys and creating a permission structure for those Republicans who have been alienated by Donald Trump and MAGA to feel comfortable casting a vote for Kamala Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cheneys also cast their endorsements as being driven more by their grave concern over the threat posed by a second Trump term than by their support for Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about the moment that we\u2019re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes \u2014 and he\u2019s said publicly \u2014 there\u2019s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is, and that\u2019s the moment that we\u2019re facing,\u201d Liz Cheney said Friday.<\/p>\n
The Cheneys\u2019 dual endorsement comes after the notable absence of past Republican standard-bearers such as Bush, Pence and Romney at this year\u2019s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. By contrast, the Democratic convention in Chicago included appearances by Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as several Republicans who previously supported Trump.<\/p>\n
Dick Cheney epitomized the Republican Party for decades, serving as a congressman from Wyoming, White House chief of staff for President Gerald Ford and defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n
Cheney was pivotal in persuading Bush to go to war against Iraq in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. His stance on the \u201cwar on terror\u201d helped establish the detention camp at Guant\u00e1namo Bay for suspected terrorists, and he defended waterboarding and other controversial intelligence-gathering techniques that critics called torture.<\/p>\n
His power was evident in almost every area in politics as second-in-command. He screened potential Supreme Court nominees and led the selection of personnel from Cabinet officers to key lower-level positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not used to agreeing with one Cheney, let alone two, but I continue to respect @Liz_Cheney for putting country over party,\u201d Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), wrote on X. \u201cHer endorsements speak volumes about the threat posed by Donald Trump at a time when so few Republicans have the courage to speak up and do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her remarks, Liz Cheney also pledged her support for Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) in his challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). She said Allred, a former House colleague, is a \u201ctremendous, serious candidate\u201d and that she will be \u201cworking on his behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheney blasted Cruz for leading the Senate effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump lost to Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were no legitimate contested states. He was saying he hoped to be able to overturn the election,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is not someone you can put in a position to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who was injured in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, congratulated Liz Cheney on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood on you,\u201d Dunn, who ran unsuccessfully for a House seat in Maryland, wrote on X.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former vice president Dick Cheney, who was George W. Bush\u2019s No. 2 and served in other Republican administrations, will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, he said in a statement Friday \u2014 marking a remarkable historic moment and one of the most significant defections to the Democratic nominee from the opposing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}