Liz Cheney dubs Trump ‘petty, vindictive and cruel’ as she campaigns with Harris and says she’ll vote Democrat for first time

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday stood alongside former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney — one of the most conservative women to ever serve in Congress — to accept her endorsement in this year’s presidential election and warn of the dire consequences of re-electing Donald Trump to the White House.

In an unprecedented joint appearance with the former House GOP conference chair in Ripon, Wisconsin — the place where the Republican Party was first formed more than 150 years ago — Harris said upholding the US constitution should be a “basic requirement” for seeking and holding the highest office in the United States. And citing Trump’s efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election four years ago, she warned that Trump “must never again, stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.”

“The tragic truth that we are facing in this election for President of the United States is that there is actually an honest question about whether one of the candidates will uphold the oath to the Constitution of the United States,” she said.

“I know the vast majority of us agree that upholding the Constitution must be a basic requirement we expect of anyone seeking the highest office in the land. I know the vast majority of us, regardless of your political party, agree we must hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections to the peaceful transfer of power,” Harris said.

“If you share that view, no matter your political party, there is a place for you with us and in this campaign, because those principles I know unite us across party lines, and in this election, I take seriously my pledge to be a president for all Americans,” she added.

Harris promised that as president, she would not “not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self interest,” nor would she view America as “an instrument for [her] own ambitions” or “some spoil to be won.”

“The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised, the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibilities of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together,” she said.

Harris took the stage to the strains of Beyonce’s “Freedom” after a rousing introduction from Cheney, the daughter of a Republican vice president and a lifelong member of the GOP.

Cheney, who recalled how she’d first voted for a Republican presidential candidate when she cast a ballot for Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election, told the crowd in Ripon that this year, she is “proudly casting [her] vote” for Harris because the Democratic vice president is “standing in the breach at a critical moment in our nation’s history” and “working to unite reasonable people from all across the political spectrum.”

“Vice President Harris has dedicated her life to public service. I know, I know that she loves our country, and I know that she will be a president for all Americans, as a conservative, as a patriot, as a mother, as someone who reveres our Constitution, I am honored to join her in this urgent cause,” she said.

The former Wyoming congresswoman, who served as vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack of the Capitol that Trump fomented after he lost the 2020 election, said the American republic “faces a threat unlike any we have faced before” in the GOP’s presidential candidate, “a former president who attempted to stay in power by unraveling the foundations of our Republic, by refusing to accept the lawful results —confirmed by dozens of courts — of the 2020 election.”

“We cannot turn away from this truth in this election,” she said. “Putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration — is our duty.”

Cheney added that the “peaceful transfer of power” that Trump attempted to subvert is “at the very heart of our survival as a republic.”

“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our capitol to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself. I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, that is depravity, and we must never become numb to it,” she said. “Any person who would do these things can never be trusted with power again.”

Continuing, she said of the former president: “He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel, and ... is not fit to lead this good and great nation.”

Trump has previously called for Cheney to face a televized military tribunal.

The joint appearance by Harris and Cheney is the latest expression of the Harris-Walz campaign’s effort to rally Republicans and republican-leaning voters who’ve become disillusioned with the direction of the Party of Lincoln in the age of Donald Trump.

The campaign has been organizing a formal “Republicans for Harris” effort for months, and has thus far been successful at organizing high-profile endorsements for the vice president from members of the GOP.

Not one of the living former Republican vice presidents has endorsed Trump’s re-election bid, and Cheney’s own father — former vice president Dick Cheney — has formally endorsed Harris, calling Trump the greatest threat the American republic has faced from any individual.

“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 said.

Other former Republican elected officials who have endorsed Harris include former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, who served with Liz Cheney on the House January 6 committee, and former Republican senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas.

But the ranks of former GOP diehards who’ve thrown support behind Harris goes beyond former elected officials.

In September, more than 200 former staffers for Republican presidential candidates — including former presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush, Utah Senator Mitt Romney and the late Arizona Senator John McCain — issued an open letter calling on  “moderate Republicans and conservative independents” to join them in backing the Democratic candidate against Trump, calling the ex-president’s potential return to the White House “simply untenable.”

Numerous officials who served in the Trump administration have endorsed Harris or have declined to endorse Trump’s third bid for the presidency on the grounds that he is unfit to serve because of his disregard for the US constitution.

At the only debate between Trump and Harris in September, two top Trump White House officials — ex-communications director Anthony Scaramucci and former vice presidential homeland security adviser Olivia Troye served as surrogates for the vice president.

Several more ex-Trump White House staffers — Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews — have also endorsed Harris this year, and all three are scheduled to join Cheney in campaigning for the vice president at an event in Pennsylvania next week.