Dick Cheney says he will vote for Kamala Harris for president
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, said Friday he will vote for Kamala Harris for president, two days after his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, endorsed the vice president.
“He can never be trusted with power again,” Dick Cheney said in a statement, referring to former President Trump. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Earlier Friday, Liz Cheney announced her father’s support for Harris when asked by Mark Leibovich of the Atlantic magazine during an onstage interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Liz Cheney said to audience cheers. She endorsed Harris on Wednesday.
Like his daughter, Dick Cheney has been an outspoken critic of Trump, notably during Liz Cheney’s ill-fated reelection campaign in 2022.
In a campaign ad for Liz Cheney as she sought a fourth term as Wyoming’s lone member of the U.S. House, Dick Cheney called Trump a “coward” for trying to “steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.”
The ad did little good for his daughter in a deep-red state that once held the Cheney family dear but is now thoroughly in Trump’s corner. By a 2-to-1 margin, Liz Cheney lost her Republican primary to Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman.
Asked for comment on the Cheneys’ endorsement, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “Who is Liz Cheney and what does she do?”
The campaign confirmed Cheung was being sarcastic by also pointing to a comment Liz Cheney posted online four years ago in which she called Harris a “radical liberal.”
Trump’s debate technique involves burying opponents with so many falsehoods and outlandish statements that they don’t have time to respond.
Liz Cheney’s endorsement had ended weeks of speculation about how fully the member of a GOP dynasty turned Trump critic would embrace the Democratic ticket.
In a video posted on the social media network X, she finished by talking about the “danger” she believed Trump still poses to the country.
“I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” she said. “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
Dick Cheney, 83, has made few if any public appearances over the last year or more. He has dealt with heart issues since his 40s and underwent a heart transplant in 2012.
Both Cheneys backed Trump in 2016, but after Liz Cheney criticized Trump’s foreign policy decisions and Trump criticized the “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq launched when Dick Cheney was vice president, their support waned.
If either Cheney supported Trump in 2020, they were mum about it. Meanwhile, their home state of Wyoming that year delivered Trump his widest margin of victory.
Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump in 2021 and her role as vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee made the Cheneys irredeemable to Trump — and soon most of the GOP.
There were exceptions. One was Cheney ally Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican Trump critic and fellow Jan. 6 committee member. Kinzinger, who has since left Congress, endorsed Biden earlier this year and spoke in support of Harris at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Several other Republican officials have come out in support of Harris, while some notable Trump critics, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and former Vice President Mike Pence, say they won’t be voting for Trump but have not endorsed the Democrat.
Of them only Romney, who is not seeking reelection, is still in office.
More than 200 alumni of the George W. Bush administration and former Republican presidential campaigns of the late Sen. John McCain and Romney also recently announced their endorsement of Harris.
Gruver writes for the Associated Press.
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