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One year after Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, former Vice President Dick Cheney joined his daughter Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney on the floor of the House to take a lonely position commemorating the anniversary. The Cheneys were greeted warmly by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then took their seats on the Republican side of the chamber. Looking around, they quickly realized they were the only Republicans there. The former vice president was stunned. “It’s one thing to hear about what’s happening in our party, but to see it, like this, in such stark terms,” Dick Cheney told his daughter, according to her 2023 memoir. Later that day, when reporters asked Dick Cheney what he thought about how Republican leadership had quickly reversed course and folded to Trump, he said: “Well, it’s not leadership that resembles any of the folks that I knew when I was here for 10 years.” The episode is illustrative of the seismic shift inside the GOP since Trump became its standard-bearer, and the story of how Trump expelled former party leaders who broke with him after he attempted to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Liz Cheney says it is also the story of how her father influenced her life and career, and why she was able to stand up to Trump, a move which cost her both her leadership position and her seat in Congress. “I want people to know that my father raised me to have the courage of my convictions,” Cheney told CNN. No doubt many people will remember the 84-year-old Dick Cheney, who died on Monday evening, as one of the most powerful and controversial vice presidents in history. He became a lightning rod for criticism over his role in the Iraq War and earned the nickname “Darth Vader” for his unapologetic support for “enhanced interrogation” of US detainees after 9/11. But Liz Cheney says she hopes people will also remember that her father was one of the few Republican leaders who broke with his party and spoke out publicly against Trump. In a blunt political ad for his daughter’s 2022 primary campaign, the former vice president blasted Trump as “a coward” and a “threat.” “I want people to remember that my father chose country over party,” Liz Cheney said. When Liz Cheney voted to impeach Trump after January 6, the disgraced former president still had enough influence to make sure she became a pariah in the GOP. She was kicked out of Republican leadership then defeated in a primary by a Trump ally. But neither father nor daughter backed down. Liz Cheney accepted Speaker Pelosi’s invitation to be vice chair of the House January 6 committee and accused Trump of inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Dick Cheney, once vilified by Democrats, joined his daughter and endorsed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The day Liz Cheney announced that her father would support Harris at the Texas Tribune festival, the audience responded with a huge ovation. In his endorsement, the former staunch Republican vice president said of Trump, “There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic.” In an interview with 60 Minutes in 2021, Liz Cheney underscored their shared commitment. “I talk to my dad probably just about every single day. And he sees things the way that I see them.” Still, when asked if she ever imagined that her father would one day vote for a Democrat for president, Liz Cheney shook her head, smiled and said “No.” A vice president with ‘no regrets’ When Liz Cheney accepted the Profile in Courage award in May 2022 from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, she told a little-known story of how her father was inspired to go into public service. As a young man, Dick Cheney had planned to get his PhD and become an academic, but in 1963, he attended a speech by President John F. Kennedy and was so moved by his words he went to work in Washington. “I am tempted to stop here to say the moral of this story is if you don’t like Dick Cheney’s policies, you should blame John Kennedy!” Liz Cheney said to laughter. Dick Cheney went on to have a decades-long career in Republican politics, serving as the youngest White House chief of staff in history to President Gerald R. Ford, then as a congressman from Wyoming, and defense secretary in the George H. W. Bush administration. In 2000, Cheney was tapped to lead George W. Bush’s vice presidential selection committee — and ultimately, took the job himself. Cheney added national security gravitas to the ticket. Once in office, he became a powerful and polarizing figure as the chief architect of the “war on terror” following the September 11, 2001, attacks and his role campaigning for the ill-fated war in Iraq in 2003. Democrats swept back into power in the 2006 midterm elections and with the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, who campaigned on promises to end the wars and other failed policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. Despite harsh criticism that “enhanced interrogation” was torture, Cheney never backed down. Discussing his memoir in 2011, Cheney said he had “no regrets” and it was “the right thing to do.” After leaving the White House, he became a strident critic of Obama’s foreign policy and wrote two memoirs, including one with his daughter, Liz, titled, “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” Discussing the book in 2015, Liz Cheney said her father taught her the importance of having “the courage of your convictions” and “how important it is to do what’s right for the nation.” “I feel confident he will be remembered as a man of tremendous courage, and someone who did what he knew was right, even when it was tough, and even when people were criticizing him for it,” she told CNN. When Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015 and quickly surged to the top of GOP polls, Dick Cheney said he was “surprised” Trump had done as well as he had. While publicly, Dick Cheney endorsed Trump in May 2016, privately he always had reservations about Trump’s experience, temperament and foreign policy instincts. Early on in Trump’s first administration, Cheney said privately that he was alarmed by the chaos as well as Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Of course, Dick Cheney had reason to keep his concerns private: His daughter was following in his footsteps. She was first elected to Congress in Wyoming in 2016, the same year as Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton. ‘Defend the republic, daughter’ As Liz Cheney quickly rose in the ranks of House Republican leadership, she stayed true to the hawkish foreign policy she shared with her father. In general, she backed Trump, but would challenge him on national security. In 2018, Cheney said she was “deeply troubled” by Trump’s embrace of Putin at a Helsinki press conference. But both Cheneys became even more alarmed after Trump refused to accept his 2020 election loss. They were concerned Trump would try to stop the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, the day Congress was scheduled to certify the election. As Liz Cheney was leaving her parents’ house on New Year’s Day, her father told her, “Defend the republic, daughter,” according to her memoir. She responded, “I will, Dad. Always.” Liz Cheney wrote that her father helped to organize a letter signed by all 10 former defense secretaries, which said that the election was over and warned against any use of the military. On January 6, when Trump said in his speech on the Ellipse that his supporters should get rid of “the Liz Cheneys of the world,” Dick Cheney called to warn his daughter that she was in danger. A week later, she was one of 10 House Republicans who joined with Democrats to impeach Trump over the attack on the Capitol. That vote was the beginning of the end of Cheney’s role in House Republican leadership. In May 2021, she was forced out as GOP conference chair. Asked afterward what advice her father had given her, Liz Cheney said in an NBC interview that she learned from him “the importance of having the courage of your convictions.” “People say well this is courageous, you know, I’m not landing on Omaha Beach — that’s courage,” she said. “This is duty, this is what our oath requires and what history requires, and I’m just incredibly proud to be Dick Cheney’s daughter.” Ostracized from the House GOP, Cheney joined Democrats on the January 6 committee, giving the panel a bipartisan imprimatur as it uncovered shocking new details about the attack and Trump’s role. The day Cheney received the invitation from Speaker Pelosi, she happened to be with her father. When she shared the news, he said: “I’m proud of you.” “Every step of the way he was fully supportive,” Liz Cheney said of her father. “He was heartbroken about what was happening in our country.” On the first anniversary of the January 6 attack, the Cheneys were met with a line-up of Democrats thanking them for being there to honor the anniversary. Pelosi specifically applauded the former vice president for his appearance. “That he would come this day with Liz Cheney, as you know, his daughter, was quite a statement on his part, one that was well received by the rest of us,” Pelosi told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that night. “We’ve had our disagreements, but never a disagreement as to whether everybody was committed to honoring our oath of office to support and defend the constitution of the United States.” ‘He is a coward’ Liz Cheney’s role on the January 6 committee put her further at odds with her party as Trump quickly regained his influence over the GOP and vowed revenge. When Cheney tried to keep her seat in Congress, Trump did everything he could to defeat her. “There is no RINO in America who has thrown in her lot with the radical left more than Liz Cheney,” Trump said at a Wyoming rally he held in May 2022 ahead of the primary. In response, Dick Cheney made a television ad attacking Trump to try to help his daughter keep the Wyoming seat he also held for a decade. “He is a coward,” Cheney said, speaking directly into the camera. “A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters, he lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and I think deep down most Republicans know it.” When Liz Cheney was defeated, she vowed to do everything in her power to stop Trump from returning to the Oval Office. “Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could have easily done the same again,” she said in her concession speech. “The path was clear, but it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election, it would’ve required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system, and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.” In 2024, Trump easily won the Republican nomination and was facing off against Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. The Cheneys had one more decision to make: Whether Dick Cheney would support a Democrat. Breaking with his Republican past, he did. In September, he issued a statement endorsing Harris: “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.” Liz Cheney went a step further and appeared at several rallies with Harris, in an attempt to reach out to disaffected Republicans. “I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray tanning,” Liz Cheney said at a campaign event with Harris in October 2024. “I have never voted for a Democrat but this year I am proudly casting my vote for Kamala Harris.” When Harris and Liz Cheney appeared together, the vice president specifically thanked Dick Cheney as well. “I also want to thank your father, Vice President Dick Cheney, for his support and what he has done to serve our country. Every endorsement matters, and this endorsement matters a great deal, Liz,” Harris said. On a lighter note, reflecting on her father’s legacy, Liz Cheney said that the “Darth Vader” nickname he was given while vice president was always laughed about inside the family. “He’s really the opposite of his public persona,” she said. “That’s why the Darth Vader caricature was so funny to us, and it became a family joke.”
