Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney will vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the 2024 election, he said in a statement released Friday, shortly after his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, revealed his intentions.
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” the former Wyoming Republican lawmaker said during an event at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“If you think about the moment we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes — and he said publicly — there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is,” Liz Cheney added.
Dick Cheney, 83, has been an outspoken critic of Trump, and in his statement, he argued that the former president “can never be trusted with power again.”
“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” read the former vice president’s 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.”
“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” he added. “That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The elder Cheney, who served as vice president under former President George W. Bush, similarly called Trump a “threat to our republic” and a “coward” in a 2022 campaign ad for his daughter during her failed House re-election bid.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual that was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Dick Cheney declared in the ad.
“He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters rejected him. He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters,” the former vice president went on. “He lost his election, and he lost big. I know that he knows it and deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”
The former defense secretary and White House chief of staff concluded by touting his daughter’s effort to ensure “Donald Trump is never again in the Oval Office.”
The Trump campaign responded to Liz Cheney’s announcement by sharing a clip of the Republican nominee slamming the decision to invade Iraq as “a big fat mistake” during a February 2016 primary debate.
Dick Cheney is widely considered to be one of the architects of the Iraq War and responsible for convincing Bush to invade the Middle Eastern country and topple the late dictator Saddam Hussein.
Liz Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building. She later joined former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), another outspoken critic of Trump, as the only other Republican member on the House select committee that investigated the riot.
Cheney, 58, lost her 2022 GOP primary to Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) in a landslide, mustering only 29% support in the deep-red state.
The former congresswoman endorsed Harris for president on Thursday.
Liz Cheney also announced Friday that she would be supporting Democrat Colin Allred in the Texas US Senate race over incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
