Liz Cheney campaigns with Harris, 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, urging them to reject “the depraved cruelty” of the former president.

A former representative from Wyoming, Cheney put nothing less than the future of American democracy at stake in November when she appeared Thursday with Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, the symbolic birthplace of the modern Republican Party.

The daughter of Dick Cheney, the former Republican vice president, said she had never voted for a Democrat before but would “proudly” do so 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 all conservative values,” Cheney said from a podium decorated with the vice presidential seal. The crowd began chanting, “Thank you, Liz!” Above them was a large sign that read, “Country before party.”

Harris praised Cheney's “courage” for his willingness to cross party lines to support the Democratic nominee and fight alongside him. During the event, a remarkable joint appearance that would have been unthinkable in the pre-Trump era, Cheney introduced Harris as a unifying leader who would protect American institutions.

Cheney and Harris hardly agree politically – only that Trump should not be allowed to run for a second term. But their union is part of the Harris campaign's effort to win over Republican voters who, like Cheney, believe in “limited government” and “low taxes” but are repelled by Trump and his MAGA movement.

“No matter what political party you are, 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 is touting a growing collection of endorsements from prominent Republican leaders and former Trump administration officials, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide who testified against him at the House hearings on Jan. 6, and Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director. and Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary.

Adam Kinzinger, a former Illinois representative and the only other Republican serving on the committee as of Jan. 6, also supports Harris and strongly condemned Trump in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in August.

In retaliation for her role as vice chairwoman of the House special committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, Cheney methodically told the crowd on Thursday how Trump had refused to intervene for hours on January 6 and instead watched the violence unfold on television.

“After the Capitol was breached, he praised the rioters. He didn't condemn her. That’s Donald Trump,” she said. Cheney blamed Republicans for trying to “downplay what happened that day.”

“Let no one lie about what happened and what they did,” she said, adding: “Violence does not and must never determine who rules over us. Voters do.”

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

Harris' appearance with Cheney came a day after a judge unsealed new evidence in a federal case against Trump over his attempt to stay in power in 2020. In the court filing, federal prosecutors allege that he amplified false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to criminal conduct” in his failed attempt to overturn the results of an election he lost.

At a rally in Michigan 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 have to be too big to manipulate.”

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

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

“It always comes so close,” he told reporters. “She’ll be fine.”

He also praised her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for his performance against JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, during Tuesday night's debate in New York. Towards the end of the 90-minute exchange, Walz turned to the topic of the 2020 election: Did Trump lose? 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 primarily the reason he, rather than former Vice President Mike Pence, was on stage that night. The response was cut out and immediately repackaged into a television ad by the Harris campaign.

As protesters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6, the then-vice president resisted pressure from Trump to reject the Electoral College votes and returned to the Capitol after the breach to certify Biden’s victory.

On Thursday, Cheney claimed that Vance, in Pence's place, would have “discarded the votes of the people of Wisconsin” because they voted to elect Biden president in 2020. “This is tyranny and this is disqualifying,” she said.

Cheney effectively ended her own political career by voting to impeach Trump for his role in inciting a gang of supporters to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She was one of only two Republicans willing to participate in the House special committee's investigation into the attack, which sought to hold Trump — and his Republican supporters — accountable for the sweeping effort to overturn his defeat.

She lost a 2022 Republican primary but remained a vocal critic of the former president. Before Biden resigned, Cheney said she was considering a third-party bid.

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

“Now I’m confident,” she said, smiling wider, “that John Adams meant women, too.”