CHEYENNE, Wyoming (AP) – Former Vice President Dick Cheneya lifelong Republican, will choose Kamala Harris as his presidential candidate, he announced on Friday.
Liz Cheney, who herself supported Harris first announced her father’s support on Wednesday when Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic magazine asked her about it during an onstage interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“Wow,” Leibovich replied to cheers from the audience.
Like his daughter, Dick Cheney was an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, particularly during Liz Cheney’s ill-fated 2022 re-election campaign.
Dick Cheney issued a statement Friday confirming his support, which read almost entirely as opposition to Trump rather than support for Harris.
“He can never be trusted with power again,” the statement said. “As citizens, we all have a duty to put country above party politics to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Trump responded on his platform Truth Social by calling the former vice president “along with his daughter, an irrelevant RINO,” the acronym standing for “Republican in name only.”
When asked for comment, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said: “Who is Liz Cheney?”
The campaign confirmed that Cheung was being sarcastic, also pointing to a comment Liz Cheney posted online four years ago in which she called Harris a “radical liberal.”
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign manager, released a statement saying, “The Vice President is proud to support Vice President Cheney and deeply respects his courage to put country before party.”
Dick Cheney, 83, has made little or no public appearances in the past year or more. He has suffered from heart problems since he was 40 and underwent a heart transplant in 2012.
Dick Cheney’s statement on Friday was similar to one from 2022 Election campaign ad for Liz Cheney, who was seeking a fourth term as Wyoming’s only congresswoman. In it, he called Trump a “coward” for trying to “steal the last election with lies and violence to hold on to power after voters rejected him.”
The ad did little to help his daughter in a deep red state that once valued the Cheney family but is now fully on Trump’s side. With a majority of more than 2:1, Liz Cheney lost her Republican primary to Trump-backed lawyer Harriet Hageman.
Dick Cheney was Friends of the Democrats Over the years, however, I have never supported any of them as a presidential candidate.
Both Cheneys supported Trump in 2016, but after that Criticism of Liz Cheney Trump foreign policy decisions and Trump criticized the “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were initiated during Dick Cheney’s term as Vice President, their support waned.
If either of the Cheneys supported Trump in 2020, it was kept quiet. Their home state of Wyoming gave Trump his biggest victory that year.
By 2021, Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment and her investigation of him over the 2021 U.S. Capitol riots made her irredeemable to Trump—and soon to most of the Republican Party.
There were exceptions. One of them was Cheney ally Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican Trump critic who earlier this year supported Biden And spoke out in favor of Harris at the Democratic Party Convention in August.
Several other leading Republicans have spoken out in favor of Harris, while others, including Senator Mitt Romney and former Vice President Mike Pence, have said they would not vote for Trump.
Of them, only Romney, who no re-electionis still in office.
