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Liz Cheney mocked Donald Trump’s use of bronzer on Thursday during a campaign appearance with Kamala Harris in Wisconsin, where the vice president formally accepted last month’s surprise endorsement from the Republican.
“I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray tanning,” Cheney told the crowd.
She said was supporting Harris in 2024 nonetheless because she didn’t trust Trump to honor the constitution after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
“The most conservative of conservative values is fidelity to our constitution,” Cheney added. “I tell you I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year I am proudly casting my vote for vice president Kamala Harris.”
The event, held in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican party, was the latest attempt by the Harris campaign to woo disaffected members of the GOP to vote for a Democrat in 2024 by highlighting Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and frequent implications he won’t accept the election results if he loses.
“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 told the crowd on Thursday.
“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.
The campaign has also received the endorsement of Liz Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, the archconservative architect of many controversial War on Terror policies who served as vice president during the George W. Bush administration.
Both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have begun publicly praising the elder Cheney, despite Democrats historically reviling him for his role advocating for the Iraq War and the U.S. torture program during the Bush years.
During her Wisconsin speech, Harris thanked Dick Cheney for “his support and what he has done to serve our country. "
Biden recently told reporters of Dick Cheney that, “We argued like hell but I always admited his courage and honesty,” despite once claiming in 2008 that Cheney had “done more harm than any other single high elected official in memory in terms of shredding the constitution.”
It’s unclear whether this association with figures on the right has made much impact for the Harris campaign.
As our poll tracker notes, Harris retains a projected lead nationally, but recent national polls show Trump still has the lead among independents, the sort of centrist voters the Harris campaign is hoping to snatch from the Republicans.
Harris’s embrace of the Cheneys has earned her campaign condemnation from groups working with Muslims and Arab-Americans, a key demographic in swing states like Michigan, who have been pressuring Democrats and the Biden administration to do more to end the war in Gaza.
“No elected official who cares about justice or the rule of law or human rights should ever praise Liz Cheney, a torture advocate, anti-Muslim bigot and warmonger who once refused to condemn racists spreading the Obama birther conspiracy,” Council on American-Islamic Relations national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement on Thursday.
“Supporting President Trump’s impeachment does not wash away Rep. Cheney’s support for crimes like torture. The same is true of Dick Cheney, a war criminal and one of the most disastrous vice presidents in U.S. history.”
In 2009, Liz Cheney defended proponents of the racist and Islamophobic birther conspiracy against Barack Obama, and in 2021, Cheney said she “absolutely” still supported the use of waterboarding.
