Liz Cheney campaigns with Harris and urges voters to reject Trump’s ‘cruelty’ | US elections 2024

Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics, appealed to the millions of undecided Americans who could decide the outcome of the 2024 election, asking them to reject “the depraved cruelty” of the former president .

Cheney, a former representative from Wyoming, staked the stakes on nothing less than the future of American democracy in November when she appeared with Kamala Harris on Thursday in Ripon, Wisconsin, the symbolic birthplace of the modern Republican Party.

The daughter of Dick Cheney, the Republican former vice president, said she had never voted for a Democrat before but would do so “with pride” to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in voting for Harris.

“I know that loyalty to our Constitution is the most conservative of conservative values,” Cheney said, speaking from a podium decorated with the vice presidential seal. The crowd erupted in chant: “Thanks, Liz!” A large sign rising above them read: “Country over Party.”

Harris praised Cheney’s “courage” for being willing to cross party lines to support the Democratic nominee — and campaign alongside him. At the event, a remarkable joint appearance that would have been unthinkable in the pre-Trump era, Cheney cast Harris as a unifying leader who will protect America’s institutions.

Cheney and Harris do not agree much politically – only that Trump should not serve a second term. But their union is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to win over Republican voters who, like Cheney, believe in “limited government” and “low taxes” but are turned off by Trump and his Maga movement .

“Regardless of your political party, there is a place for you with us and in this campaign,” Harris said. “I take seriously my promise to be a president for all Americans.”

Harris touts a growing collection of endorsements from prominent Republican leaders and former Trump administration officials, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House official who testified against him during the Jan. 6 House hearings, and Anthony Scaramucci, a former communications director from the White House. and Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary.

Adam Kinzinger, a former Illinois representative and the only other Republican serving on the Jan. 6 committee, also supports Harris and strongly denounced Trump in a speech at the Democratic national convention in August.

In retaliation for her role as vice chair of the committee investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Cheney methodically told the crowd Thursday how Trump had refused to intervene for hours on Jan. 6, instead watching the violence unfold unfolded. on television.

“After the Capitol was invaded, he praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That is who Donald Trump is,” she said. Cheney chided Republicans who tried to “minimize what happened that day.”

“Let no one lie about what happened and what they did,” she said, adding: “Violence does not and should never define who governs us.” Voters do.”

Cheney was effectively expelled from her own party after she made a forceful break with the former president. But on Thursday she said it was Trump, three times elected as the Republican nominee, who failed to uphold the founding ideals of the “party of Lincoln.” With a touch of arch humor, she added, “I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray tanning.”

Harris’ appearance with Cheney came a day after a judge unveiled new evidence in a federal case against Trump over his bid to cling to power in 2020. In the lawsuit, federal prosecutors allege he amplified false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes.” ‘ in his failed attempt to overturn the results of an election he lost.

At a rally in Michigan earlier on Thursday, Trump repeated the false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

“We won. We won,” Trump said in Saginaw, a swing county in the battleground of the Midwest. “We must be too big to manipulate.”

Harris will travel to Michigan on Thursday evening and campaign in Detroit on Friday, as candidates battle for votes in the trio of blue wall swing states seen as the clearest path to the White House.

As he left the White House on Thursday, Joe Biden said he was hardly surprised by the razor-thin margins.

“It always comes so close,” he told reporters. “She’s doing well.”

He also praised her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for his performance against JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, during Tuesday night’s debate in New York. Towards the end of the ninety-minute discussion, Walz turned to the topic of the 2020 election: had Trump lost? he asked Vance.

Vance responded that he was “focused on the future.”

“That’s a damn non-answer,” Walz responded, adding that Vance’s loyalty to Trump was largely the reason he, and not former Vice President Mike Pence, was on stage that night. The response was cut short by the Harris campaign and immediately repackaged into a television commercial.

On January 6, as protesters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” the then-vice president resisted pressure from Trump to reject the Electoral College votes and returned to the Capitol after it was breached to confirm Biden’s victory .

On Thursday, Cheney claimed that Vance, in Pence’s shoes, would have “thrown away the votes of the people of Wisconsin” for voting to elect Biden president in 2020. “That is tyranny, and that is disqualifying,” she said.

Cheney effectively ended her own political career by voting to impeach Trump for his role in inciting a mob of supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She was one of only two Republicans willing to serve on the House committee’s investigation into the attack that sought to hold Trump — and his Republican enablers — responsible for the elaborate effort to reverse his defeat .

She lost a Republican primary in 2022 but remained an outspoken critic of the former president. Before Biden stepped aside, Cheney said she was considering a third-party bid.

But on Thursday she made it clear that there was no other alternative to Trump. Cheney quoted from a letter that John Adams, the nation’s second president, wrote to his wife on his first night in the White House: “May none but honest and wise men ever reign under this roof.”

“Now I’m convinced,” she said with a wider smile, “that John Adams meant women too.”