CNN
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that he will vote for Democrat Kamala Harris over fellow Republican Donald Trump in the November election, warning 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,” Cheney 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.”
“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,” he concluded.
Harris, according to a statement from campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, was proud to receive Cheney’s support and “deeply respects his courage to put country over party.”
Cheney’s daughter, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, first revealed earlier in the day that her father would be voting for the Democratic ticket during remarks at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas. The former Republican congresswoman previously announced that she would be voting for Harris, citing “the danger that Donald Trump poses.”
In her remarks Friday, Cheney unleashed a torrent of criticism against the Republican presidential ticket, calling Trump “a depraved human being” and labeling him and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, “misogynistic pigs.”
“Every Republican, anybody who’s contemplating casting a vote for that ticket, you know, really needs to think about what they are enabling, what they’re embracing and the danger of electing people who will only honor election results if they agree with the outcome, and who are willing to set aside the Constitution,” she said in Austin. “And you know in the case of Donald Trump, promote, provoke, exploit violence in order to seize power.”
Trump, in turn, wrote on his Trump Social platform that “Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter,” referring to the Cheneys as “Republican in name only.”
The former congresswoman, who previously told CNN she was committed to doing what was necessary to stop Trump from returning to the White House, said Friday that she expected to campaign against the former president in battleground states this fall. And she suggested that her father shared her views about Trump.
“If you think about the moment that we’re in and you think about how serious this moment is, you know, my dad believes – and he said publicly – that there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is,” she said.
