WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney may have been a legendary figure within the Republican Party, but for President Donald Trump, he was part of a long list of people he viewed as political opponents.
While White House flags were lowered to half-staff in remembrance of Cheney on Tuesday, there was no fanfare, and Trump made no comment about Cheney's death on social media. His press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not mention his passing
in a press briefing until she was asked by a reporter — and then made only perfunctory comments.
“I know the president is aware of the former vice president’s passing. And as you saw, flags have been lowered to half-staff in accordance with statutory law,” Leavitt said.
Trump was not so quiet about Cheney on the campaign trail last year, speaking regularly about him and his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former member of Congress who bucked most of her party to become a leading critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to retain power after he failed to win reelection in 2020. Dick Cheney backed his daughter, and in a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, ultimately said he would vote for Trump's Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.
While campaigning in Traverse City, Mich., Trump told Arab and Muslim voters that Dick Cheney’s support for Harris should give them pause, saying he “killed more Arabs than any human being on Earth. He pushed Bush, and they went into the Middle East.”
Trump told conservative media personality Tucker Carlson that he was “never a fan of Cheney” but said he thought that the former vice president would back him, anyway. “I was a little surprised because I actually thought that Dick Cheney would go with me over his daughter, and he didn’t,” Trump said at a Oct. 31, 2024 campaign event with Carlson.
In his first term, Trump had granted Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, a pardon for his 2007 conviction of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice.
“When I became president, I actually called Dick Cheney. I said, ‘Let me ask you about Scooter Libby,’” Trump told Carlson, saying he thought former President George W. Bush “didn’t have the courage” to pardon Libby.
“I released him. Cheney called me, he said, ‘it’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen done in politics,’” Trump said.
Trump's public antipathy to the former vice president was sparked by excoriating criticism from Liz Cheney. She was vice chair of the Democratic-led special House committee that spent months investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and concluded that it was an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” Liz Cheney, who at the time represented Wyoming in the House, said during one of the committee's public hearings. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”
The elder Cheney later cut a television campaign ad for his daughter as she sought reelection to the House. That bid failed, largely due to her anti-Trump stance.
A conservative, Dick Cheney sounded an alarm about returning Trump to high office.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in the 2022 television ad. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”
___
Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward contributed to this report.
