Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney to vote for Harris, Liz Cheney says
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(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most prominent Republicans in the last half-century, will be crossing party lines this election and voting for Vice President Kamala Harris, his daughter Liz Cheney said Friday, who contended her father sees former President Donald Trump as a “grave a threat to our democracy.”
The former House member who represented Wyoming told “The Atlantic” reporter Mark Leibovich during an interview at the Texas Tribute Festival that her father believes this is a serious moment in history.
“My dad believes — and he said publicly — that there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is, and that’s, that’s the moment that we’re facing,” she said.
Tune in to “This Week” on Sunday, Sept. 8, where co-anchor Jonathan Karl will have an exclusive interview with Liz Cheney.Both Cheneys have been open about their criticism of Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Earlier in the week, Liz Cheney said she was going to vote for Harris.
She lost her seat in the 2022 primary to Trump-backed Harriet Hageman by more than 60,000 votes, according to election results.
Cheney made news on another front during her remarks at the festival and said she would support incumbent Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s Democratic challenger Rep. Colin Allred ahead of November. She said that one of the most important things to do to “rebuild our politics is we need to elect serious people.”
“You know, there aren’t enough good candidates running. I want to say specifically, though, here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for the United States Senate, and his name is …” Cheney began before being interrupted by an applause. “Well, it’s not Ted Cruz.”
“Colin Allred is somebody I served with in the House … When you think about the kind of leaders our country needs, and going to this point about [how] you might not agree on every policy position, but we need people who are going to serve in good faith. We need people who are honorable public servants and and in this race that is Colin Allred, so I’ll be working on his behalf,” she continued.
(WASHINGTON) — As Sen. JD Vance prepares to face Gov. Tim Walz in next week’s vice-presidential debate, the Ohio senator is turning to Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer to help him in debate rehearsals by playing Walz, sources familiar with the plans told ABC News.
One of the sources said Emmer was invited to stand in for Walz so that Vance could prepare to take on the governor’s folksy personality.
Vance’s debate preparations have included sessions at his Cincinnati home and online sessions with his team and with Jason Miller, a senior advisor on former President Donald Trump’s campaign, a source told ABC News.
Vance is expected to paint Walz as too liberal, focusing on the policies he has passed while governor of Minnesota, one of the sources said.
Emmer is the third-ranking Republican in the House and serves as the majority whip. Emmer also previously served as the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Emmer backed Trump for president earlier this year — despite the fact that the former president called Emmer a “Globalist RINO” who is “totally out-of-touch” with Republican voters, effectively tanking Emmer’s speakership bid in October 2023.
Walz and Emmer overlapped in the House from 2015 through 2019 before Walz ran for governor of Minnesota.
Walz’s debate preparations are also underway with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg acting as a Vance stand-in during the Walz team’s debate rehearsals. Walz has also held policy sessions with his own longtime aides, Biden White House alumni and members of the Harris-Walz campaign team.
The vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News is set to be in New York City on Tuesday, Oct. 1, the network has announced, with both Walz and Vance agreeing to participate. The debate will be moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan.
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(WASHINGTON) — As controversy continues to cloud some of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, his team has an ominous warning for Republicans who don’t fall in line behind his nominees.
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports that one senior Trump adviser said the message to lawmakers is, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary.”
“That is all,” the adviser told Karl. “And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”
“The president gets to decide his Cabinet. No one else,” the adviser added.
The threat comes as Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth (tapped for attorney general and defense secretary, respectively) make the rounds on Capitol Hill this week to shore up support. They’re being escorted by Vice President-elect JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio.
Gaetz faces allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, which he’s long denied, that was the subject of a federal investigation and a House Ethics Committee probe. Hegseth has been accused of sexual assaulting a woman in 2017, an encounter Hegseth told police was consensual.
Trump is standing firm with the selections, which had also raised eyebrows for their relative lack of experience to lead the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense.
But for Gaetz especially, confirmation is no guarantee. Republicans will have a slim, three-seat majority in the Senate.
Already, two GOP senators — Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — have signaled opposition to Gaetz, though they haven’t officially said how they would vote. Sen. Kevin Cramer told ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott last week that if the vote were to happen now, Gaetz wouldn’t pass muster.
Trump previously made a demand for Republican leadership to back so-called “recess appointments” to skirt the traditional confirmation process. That route would require lawmakers to adjourn and for senators to give up the “advice and consent” role they play in nominations, as laid out in the Constitution.
But his demand is being met with some resistance from some Senate Republicans
Sen. Thom Tillis, a senior Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said recess appointments for Cabinet posts should be “absolutely off the table.”
“And quite honestly, any serious candidate for Cabinet-level position, I would really have to wonder if they would want it or be willing to accept it under a recess,” Tillis said. “These positions are too important. They carry too much weight internationally to take a short cut.”
Several senators have said they want the full “process” and vetting of candidates to play out.
“The Constitution gives us a role in personnel called advice and consent. My view is that’s exactly what will unfold here when these nominees are actually sent forward, and we’ll treat them like we’ve treated all others with the proper vetting,” said longtime Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who recently stepped down from the role.
Sen. Josh Hawley, who met with Gaetz on Wednesday, said on Wednesday his intention to vote for all nominees.
“I think for my colleagues who are — who have concerns about the attorney general nominee, my message would be, well, let’s have a hearing on this,” Hawley said. “You can ask whatever — if you’re a member of the committee, you can ask whatever question you want, give Gaetz the opportunity to answer questions, lay out his vision, answer concerns.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris, in an appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, slammed Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently suggesting the presidential candidate isn’t humble because she doesn’t have biological children.
Speaking to “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper, who asked about Huckabee Sanders’ remark, “My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” Harris suggested the governor is caught in the past.
“I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble, two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life, and children in their life,” Harris told Cooper on “Call Her Daddy,” which Spotify says is the most-listened-to podcast by women. “And I think it’s really important for women to lift each other up.”
Harris, who is stepmother to two now-adult children from her marriage to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, said family comes in many forms.
“We have our family by blood, and then we have our family by love, and I have both, and I consider it to be a real blessing,” she said. “And I have two beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who call me Momala. We have a very modern family. My husband’s ex-wife is a friend of mine.”
She continued, “Family comes in many forms and I think that increasingly, all of us understand that this is not the 1950’s anymore. Families come in all shapes or forms and they are family nonetheless.”
During the 40-minute interview, Cooper also asked Harris about Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, having previously complained he didn’t want the country run by “childless cat ladies.”
“I just think it’s mean and mean-spirited,” Harris told Cooper. “And I think that most Americans want leaders who understand that the measure of their strength is not based on who you beat down; the real measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”
Harris spent much of the interview discussing abortion rights and what statewide abortion bans can mean for people living in those states — including mothers, who may need to arrange childcare and travel out of state for the procedure.
“Let’s talk about how it affects a real person. The majority of women who receive abortion care are mothers,” Harris said. “So imagine she’s in a state with an abortion ban — one out of three women are, by the way, in our country — and she’s a mom. She’s going to have to figure out, one, God help her if she has affordable childcare, God help her if she has paid leave, and then she’s going to have to go to the airport, stand in a TSA line, sit on a plane next to a perfect stranger, to go to a city where she’s never been to receive the care she needs … and that’s all if they can even afford a plane or a bus ticket.”
Harris made her appeal to listeners who might not personally believe in abortion, emphasizing that women should have the right to choose for themselves.
“You don’t have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that government shouldn’t be telling her what to do. If she chooses, she’ll talk to her priest, her pastor, her rabbi or Imam, but not the government telling you what to do,” Harris said. “And that’s what’s so outrageous about it, is a bunch of these guys up in these state capitals are writing these decisions because they somehow have decided that they’re in a better position to tell you what’s in your best interest than you are to know what’s in your own best interest.”
She continued: “This is not about imposing my thoughts on you in terms of what you do with your life or your body. … It’s actually quite the opposite. It’s saying the government shouldn’t be telling people what to do.”
She also hit back against Trump’s false claim at last month’s presidential debate that some states allow post-birth abortions.
“That is not happening anywhere in the United States. It is not happening, and it’s a lie — it’s a bald-faced lie that he is suggesting,” she said. “Can you imagine, can you imagine — he’s suggesting that women in their ninth month of pregnancy are electing to have an abortion. Are you kidding? That is so outrageously inaccurate, and it’s so insulting to suggest that that would be happening and that women would be doing that. It’s not happening anywhere. This guy is full of lies.”
Harris railed against Trump’s baseless claims about abortion, calling him “careless and irresponsible and reckless.”
Asked by Cooper how she was feeling in the last few weeks of the campaign, Harris said she was feeling both “great” and “nervous.”
“You know, there’s this old adage: there are only two ways to run: without an opponent or scared. So there you go,” Harris said. “The only thing that matters is really just spending as much time as I can, as much time as I possibly can, meeting with people and talking with them about the stakes and their future.”
