UPDATE
Sep 7, 2024 7:00 AM CDT
Hours after daughter Liz Cheney announced that he'd be joining her in voting for Kamala Harris for president, former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney released a short statement on why he's ditching his party's nominee, Donald Trump. "In our nation's 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," the 83-year-old said in a statement. "He 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." Cheney added: "We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution." The New York Times notes that Cheney's announcement is "only the latest reflection of how profoundly the Republican Party has shifted since Mr. Cheney was in power," when "his brand of conservatism ... defined the GOP." More here.
Sep 6, 2024 4:40 PM CDT
Former Rep. Liz Cheney announced Wednesday that she's voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November. On Friday, she told a Texas audience that another lifelong Republican she knows has made the same decision. "Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris," his daughter said, per the Washington Post. "If you think about the moment that we're in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes—and he's said publicly— there's never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is. And that's the moment that we're facing," she added.
Dick Cheney was vice president from 2001 to 2009, during the George W. Bush administration. During his long political career, he didn't develop a reputation for bipartisanship: Writing in the New York Times on Friday, Annie Karni described him as "one of the most influential and hawkish conservatives in the modern Republican Party and a figure reviled by the left." He has publicly criticized Trump, especially during his daughter's failed Wyoming reelection campaign in 2022. In one TV ad for his daughter, whom Trump opposed, Cheney called the former president a coward who tried to "steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him," per the Los Angeles Times.
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Liz Cheney, who made the revelation at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, said their decisions were based on country and duty coming before party, per the New York Times. Certain other Republicans—most recently former Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania—have indicated they oppose Trump but won't vote for Harris. She rejected that option. Cheney said she won't serve as an official surrogate for Harris during the campaign but will visit "many key battleground states" to stress the importance of defeating Trump, per the Washington Post. (More Kamala Harris 2024 stories.)
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