Cheney says Trump is an ‘unrecoverable catastrophe’ in call for GOP to vote for Harris
(WASHINGTON) — Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., a once-rising star in the GOP who fell out with her party over her criticism of Donald Trump, slammed the former president as an “unrecoverable catastrophe” in her call for other Republicans to vote against him this year.
“We see it on a daily basis, somebody who was willing to use violence in order to attempt to seize power, to stay in power, someone who represents unrecoverable catastrophe, frankly, in my view, and we have to do everything possible to ensure that he’s not reelected,” Cheney told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
“You have many Republicans out there who are saying, ‘Well, you know, we’re not going to vote for him, but we will write someone else in.’ And I think that this time around, that’s not enough, that it’s important to actually cast a vote for Vice President Harris,” Cheney added.
Cheney made her endorsement of Harris official this week, also announcing her father, former Vice President and liberal antagonist Dick Cheney, would follow suit.
The announcements from the Cheneys marked the highest profile endorsements from Republicans for Harris yet as the vice president looks to peel off disgruntled GOP voters frustrated with Trump’s hardline and personal brand of politics.
For his part, Trump appeared unconcerned with the endorsements, calling the former vice president “an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter,” on his Truth Social platform. “RINO” stands for “Republican in name only.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded in kind when asked about the endorsements, replying, “who the f— is Liz Cheney?”
Liz Cheney cited both Harris’ policy stances this year — some of which have moved to the center since her first run in 2019 — and a speech Harris gave at the Democratic convention this summer which leaned heavily on themes of patriotism.
“I have never viewed this as a policy election, but I think that it’s very important point. If you look at Vice President Harris’s speech, for example, at the Democratic Convention, it is a speech that Ronald Reagan could have given. It’s a speech that George Bush could have given. It’s very much an embrace and an understanding of the exceptional nature of this great nation,” she said.
“I think that she has changed in a number of very important ways on issues that matter. And I would encourage independents to look at where she is on these policy issues today. I would encourage independents to compare where she is today with where Donald Trump is on these issues,” she added. “And on top of all of that, the Republicans have nominated somebody who you know is depraved.”
Cheney seemed to recognize the stark departure from carrying on a career as a conservative warrior in the House to now endorsing a Democrat for president, suggesting that the GOP has shifted its values while she has remained consistent.
When pressed by Karl if she’s still a Republican, Cheney responded, “I’m a conservative.”
“I am certainly not a Trump Republican. I am a conservative. I think that what’s happened to the Republican party today is indefensible, and I hope to be able to rebuild, as I said, after this cycle,” Cheney said.
“But I also think it’s really important for us as we’re thinking about rebuilding, as we’re thinking about the future the country, to recognize that at the end of the day, the vast majority of people in this country want to know fundamentally that their elected officials are going to defend the peaceful transfer of power,” she said. “And as someone who’s been a lifelong Republican, it’s heartbreaking to me to see what has happened to so many of the elected officials in my party, and I know we can do better.”
Vice President Kamala Harris having worked there in college has repeatedly been brought up by speakers at the Democratic National Convention — almost as if it’s on a menu — and her campaign is using it as a symbolic, shorthand way of connecting her experience with that of working-class Americans.
Harris has noted in the past and now in campaign ads that she worked a summer job at McDonald’s in her late teens, between her freshman and sophomore years at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Her early job is a common one among Americans, according to data from the chain which says one out of every eight Americans has worked at McDonald’s.
The giant burger chain did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Harris and Walz have pointed out that their working-class roots are in sharp contrast to former President Donald Trump’s much wealthier upbringing. Walz took a dig at a campaign event a few weeks ago, claiming that Trump wouldn’t be able to cut it as a fast-food worker.
“He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything,” he said.
Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett took a jab at the DNC.
“Let’s compare their resumes, shall we?,” she said. “One candidate worked at McDonald’s while she was in college at an HBCU, [Howard University]. The other was born with the silver spoon in his mouth and helped his daddy in the family business.”
The McDonald’s connection has extended to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who not only worked there but also was named employee of the month, which he proudly recounted to the convention crowd, telling how the experience had helped shape his career.
“I still have the framed picture which you just saw, and there was a ring, golden arches and all. And then, I waited tables, parked cars. I was working full-time, so I could afford to go to college part-time. And thanks to partial scholarships, student loans, and a little help from my dad, I got myself through law school, and I got my first job as a lawyer,” he said.
Harris’ time behind the fast-food counter has even impressed one of the most famous — and notoriously frequent — McDonald’s customers, former President Bill Clinton, mocked in “SNL” skits as stopping there while jogging in Washington and eating other customers’ fries.
“She greeted every person with that thousand-watt smile and said, ‘How can I help you?’ Now she’s at the pinnacle of power and she’s still asking, ‘How can I help you?'” Clinton said at the DNC Wednesday night.
“I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s,” he joked.
It’s unclear whether Harris herself will bring up her McDonald’s experience during her nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night, but it could very well become something she can say she has in common with working-class voters on the campaign trail.
(CHICAGO) — When then-Sen. Barack Obama took the stage on Aug. 28, 2008, to accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not mention the historic nature of his run. While he gave a nod to his midwestern middle-class upbringing and his Kenyan roots, the man who became the first Black president of the United States urged voters to unite and declared that the campaign was not about him.
“I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you,” Obama said.
Fifteen years later, when Obama took the DNC stage on Tuesday night, he delivered a resounding endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Obama struck a similar tone. He did not explicitly discuss Harris’ racial identity as a Black and South Asian woman or her gender identity like Hillary Clinton did on Monday night when the former Democratic nominee passed the torch to Harris with a reference to breaking the “glass ceiling.”
“Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems – she’ll be focused on yours,” Obama said.
Harris, who embarked on a historic run of her own, would become the first female president and second president of color if elected in the 2024 general election.
She has spoken with pride about her Jamaican and Indian heritage, and when she ran for president in 2020, her campaign logo was modeled after that of Shirley Chisholm – the first Black woman to run for president – and when she addressed the DNC as vice presidential nominee, she paid tribute to the women of color in politics who came before her.
It is unclear if Harris will focus on her historic run when she delivers her own acceptance speech at the DNC on Thursday. But according to experts who study race, politics and the White House, Harris has so far not made her identity a central part of her 2024 campaign like Clinton did in 2016 and like Harris did in 2020 and has instead, taken a page out of the playbook that propelled the first Black president to the White House.
“[Like Obama], Harris is letting other people talk about her identity. So you’re putting out the surrogates,” Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University who studies Black women in politics, told ABC News. “She’s not shying away from her identity, but she’s not centering this entire race and campaign on her identity.”
But is this a winning strategy?
‘Not more of the same’
Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris last month, there has been a surge in “enthusiasm” for the Democratic ticket that crossed “generational boundaries,” according to Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, who studies race and the American presidency. This shift in energy was evidenced by the $310 million fundraising haul that her campaign raised in July alone, Rigueur said.
This surge in enthusiasm is reflected in an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, which found that 50% overall say they’d be enthusiastic or satisfied if Harris were elected, compared with 36% who said that about Biden in early 2023.
According to Rigueur, the shift in “energy” is not merely a reflection of voters being excited about the historic nature of Harris’ run, but also indicative of the dissatisfaction with another matchup between Biden and former President Donald Trump – “a race between two really old white guys.”
“I think there is a real kind of excitement about the possibility of what Kamala Harris’ presidency represents,” Rigueur told ABC News. “And I think it’s also fair to say that it’s not simply that she is a woman or that she is Black or that she is Indian that is driving this enthusiasm, but instead the sensibility that … she’s refreshing; that she is new; that she is young, and that she’s not more of the same.”
But on the other hand, Brown said that like Obama, Harris has to strike a “balance” because in working to build the “rainbow coalition” she needs – one that includes independents and Trump-leaning voters – Harris is also navigating racism and the reality that some Americans are “not comfortable” with having a woman of color as president.
While “not more of the same” appeals to some voters, Brown said that for others, “it could be alienating.” This, according to Brown, is part of what informs why Harris has been focused on policy in her wider pitch to battleground state voters and has not centered the conversation around her own identity.
In her stump speeches and campaign ads so far, Harris has touted her middle-class roots – much like Obama did in 2008 – in an effort to connect with voters and make the case that she knows what it’s like to work hard, Brown said.
“She grew up in a middle-class home. She was the daughter of a working mom and she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree,” a Harris ad that touts her goals to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable says. “Being president is about who you fight for and she’s fighting for people like you.”
According to Rigueur, Harris’ strategy to focus on policy and the people, instead of the candidate, is guided by an understanding that there “is a burgeoning of a movement that sees Kamala Harris as its vehicle, not its endgame.”
“There is something novel about Kamala Harris, and it’s something that she has chosen not to emphasize in her campaign,” Rigueur said. “And I actually think that’s a smart decision [that] she’s chosen not to emphasize it, and she doesn’t need to emphasize it because it’s so apparent – it is the elephant in the room.”
‘The Obama effect’
According to Rigueur, Harris is also navigating a political landscape where “the Obama effect” is at play, where there is “an emotional difference” between new generations who grew up with a Black president, “as opposed to, say, my grandmother, who never thought that she would live to see a Black man become President of the United States.”
“I think this comes out too, in attitudes towards what people think about [when it comes to] change and progress,” Rigueur said.
Brown echoed this notion.
“People put their hopes and dreams, I think, unrealistically, on Obama, because there just wasn’t a large civic understanding about how politics works,” she said. “Just the symbolism of having the first Black president was enough for many people that they didn’t question or look into his policy preferences. And I think the difference today is, yeah, people, know.”
And this is what Brown, who is conducting research at the 2024 DNC this week, found through interviews with protesters about how they feel about a Harris presidency and whether her racial or gender identity is something that inspires them.
Brown said she was “surprised” by how many young people of color expressed that they “don’t care” about Harris’ identity and are instead concerned with her politics, particularly her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
“There’s a large number of people I’ve been surveying – talking to, here – who really disdain these boxes, right? They don’t want to, you know, identify as voting for a woman because they are a woman, and they want to talk about policy,” Brown said.
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Sunday, 38% of Americans say that having a woman serve as president would be a good thing for the country, far more than the 14% who see it as a bad thing. The rest, 47%, say it makes no difference.
The poll also found that support from Black people has swung by 12 points in Harris’ direction, from +60 for Biden in July to +72 for Harris now. But Brown said having a Black candidate is not enough – particularly in a post-Obama world.
“Black voters want more,” she said, adding that Harris’ strategy has shifted and she is “going down a different path” in 2024 than she did during her 2020 presidential campaign by making more efforts to speak authentically to Black voters.
“Being in communities with Black people like going to HBCUs, showing up at these Black civil rights organizing spaces, talking about black maternal health,” she added. “Some of these things are showing it’s not that I’m Black, but I actually am part of these communities.”
(WASHINGTON) — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is seen as one of the front-runners to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, sources have told ABC News.
Kelly hasn’t immediately commented on speculation on his possibly joining the presidential ticket.
While relatively new to Capitol Hill — having been first elected in 2020 — the border state senator and former NASA astronaut has long been involved in national issues.
Kelly, 60, was born and raised in New Jersey with his twin brother, Scott. After graduating high school, he attended United States Merchant Marine Academy where he graduated in 1988 with highest honors.
Kelly became a U.S. Navy pilot and was deployed to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He flew 39 missions during the war, according to his service record. Scott Kelly was also deployed as a U.S. Navy pilot during the war, but operated on a different ship.
Kelly continued to serve as a Navy pilot following the war and in 1996 NASA selected him and his brother to be space shuttle pilots. During his 15-year NASA career, Mark Kelly logged in 54 days in space, including several missions to the International Space Station, according to his NASA records.
Kelly became closer to the world of Washington, D.C., politics after he married his second wife, Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2007, just months into her first term. Kelly was at Giffords’ bedside after she was shot during an event with constituents in January 2011.
He would retire from NASA later that year as he helped his wife recuperate from her near-fatal wounds.
The couple became vocal gun control advocates and started a political action committee — Americans for Responsible Solutions — in 2013 which eventually evolved into the gun control non-profit Giffords. For years, Kelly would advocate for tighter gun control legislation including universal background checks, red flag laws and other measures.
Kelly, who is a gun owner, has worked with local, state and federal officials on this issue and backed candidates who shared those views.
In 2020, Kelly announced that he would get more involved in Washington and ran on the Democratic ticket for the special election that year for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat.
Kelly won the highly watched election with just roughly 78,000 votes, beating out Republican incumbent Martha McSally. The election helped Democrats gain power in the Senate.
Kelly would be reelected two years later, beating out Republican challenger Blake Masters with over 125,000 votes.
Since he joined the Hill, Kelly has positioned himself as a moderate Democrat who has been vocal on the issues.
Kelly continues to advocate for laws and policies that enact gun control, including universal background checks.
Last month, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that ruled a ban on federal ban on bump stocks was illegal, the senator vowed to introduce legislation that would make them illegal nationwide.
“Banning bump stocks is common sense. They make semi-automatic guns even deadlier, and as a gun owner and someone who knows personally the damage a gun can do, I will always support efforts to protect Americans from the most dangerous weapons and devices,” he said on a statement on his X page.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade guaranteeing nationwide access to abortion, Kelly has been pushing for abortion access for women both in Arizona, which has a ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and around the country. The state legislature repealed an Arizona State Supreme Court ruling that banned all abortions this year.
“Right now, as Arizona whiplashes between two abortion bans, physicians are choosing not to come to our state and others are considering leaving, putting women’s lives at risk. We must write abortion rights into law to eliminate once and for all the catastrophic consequences of Roe v. Wade being overturned,” he said in a statement in May.
In the past, Kelly has criticized President Joe Biden over his policies on immigration, specifically ending Title 42, which allowed the U.S. to turn away asylum seekers during the pandemic.
“When the president decided he was going to do something dumb on this and change the rules that would create a bigger crisis, I told him he was wrong. So I pushed back on this administration multiple times,” Kelly said during a 2022 debate.
Kelly has been calling for more border agents and support in Arizona to handle the influx of migrants.
The senator commended Biden recently after the president issued an executive order in June that turned away migrants who cross illegally between ports of entry and try to claim asylum after seven consecutive days of more than 2,500 encounters.
“This doesn’t change the ability for individuals to come here and seek asylum,” Kelly said in an interview with PBS last month. “There will be pathways.”
Kelly chastised former President Donald Trump for calling on Republicans to block a bipartisan bill that would have addressed the migrant crisis.
“The politics of the presidential election superseded everything,” he told PBS. “To run away from a comprehensive piece of legislation that was going to help the Border Patrol, help CBP, [and] help communities in Southern Arizona and other states…I have never seen [it].”