Trump and Vance silent on former vice president Cheney’s death

2 hours ago 3

Washington: Former US president George W. Bush has led tributes for his vice president, Dick Cheney, after his death aged 84, but President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have yet to personally acknowledge the Republican statesman’s passing.

Cheney was widely regarded as the most powerful vice president in US history – and the most controversial – as the architect of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But Cheney became a staunch and high-profile critic of Trump and the Republican Party’s embrace of Trumpism. “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” he said in a 2022 television advertisement.

“He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big.”

Cheney died on Monday night (Tuesday AEDT) from complications of pneumonia and cardiovascular disease, a statement from his family said. The White House lowered its flags to half-mast the next morning, but Trump and Vance have yet to say anything about Cheney’s passing.

At a press briefing, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not mention Cheney’s death in her opening remarks. When asked about it by a reporter, Leavitt said she did not believe the White House was involved in planning for Cheney’s funeral, “or at least hasn’t gotten to it yet”. The flag was at half-mast in accordance with protocol, she said.

The US flag flying at half-mast at the White House after the death of former vice president Dick Cheney.

Trump spent the morning posting on social media about elections being held across the US, including for New York City mayor, saying any Jewish person who voted for frontrunner Zohran Mamdani was “a stupid person”.

He also repeated his demands for congressional Republicans to reopen the US government by abolishing the long-standing Senate filibuster, and posted about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s ratings. “They have gone, as they say, ‘down the tube’,” Trump wrote. “It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”

Cheney was vice president to George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, having previously served as defence secretary to Bush’s father, president George H.W. Bush, and chief of staff to president Gerald Ford (as the youngest White House chief of staff in history), among other roles.

George W. Bush said history would remember Cheney as “among the finest public servants of his generation – a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence and seriousness of purpose to every position he held”.

Former vice president Dick Cheney, speaking in 2008, did not resile from his positions in the war on terrorism and invasion of Iraq.

“Dick was a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges. I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best,” Bush said. “He held to his convictions and prioritised the freedom and security of the American people.”

Condoleezza Rice, who was secretary of state in the same administration, said Cheney was a mentor and friend whom she admired for his integrity and love of country.

“As vice president, he helped to chart a course to protect America after the dark days of 9/11,” she said. “He was indefatigable in his determination to defend this country and patriotic to his core.”

Long-serving Republican senator Mitch McConnell, who until this year led the party in the Senate, said Cheney combined “immense organisational competence, far-sighted vision and sheer force of will” in a way rarely seen.

Mitch McConnell (left) and Dick Cheney (third from left) as George W. Bush signs proclamations following his inauguration in 2001.

“Dick Cheney served with a profound and humble appreciation for the rules, principles, and institutions that sustain America’s experiment in self-governance,” McConnell said.

“When terrorists launched a war against America on September 11, 2001, his intellect, experience, and resolve made America safer. As grave threats to our security continue to loom, his commitment to American leadership will remain a lesson.”

Those tributes contrasted starkly with the silence from Trump and prominent figures in the president’s Make America Great Again movement.

During last year’s election campaign, Trump feuded with Cheney’s daughter Liz – a former congresswoman who was supporting Democrat Kamala Harris – calling her a “radical war hawk”.

Kamala Harris campaigning with former congresswoman Liz Cheney in the swing state of Wisconsin at last year’s election.

Vance, while regarded as a vice president of similar influence to Cheney, comes from an isolationist worldview that is at odds with the military interventionism extolled and practised by Cheney throughout his career.

Cheney’s critics were forthright even in the aftermath of his death. Kenneth Roth, a lawyer and activist who led Human Rights Watch for 30 years until 2022, said Cheney would be remembered for pursuing “an utterly lawless approach” to the war on terror, including torture, forced disappearance and unlimited detention without trial.

“Dick Cheney managed to live his entire life without being prosecuted for the systematic torture that he ordered as vice president in the George W. Bush administration,” Roth said. “His opposition to Trump doesn’t change this dangerous precedent of impunity.”

Cheney, who predicted a fast and successful military operation in Iraq in 2003, and that US forces would be “greeted as liberators”, did not resile from his positions after the war dragged on and incurred thousands of American casualties.

In 2005, he told CNN: “I think on Iraq we got the big issues right ... The vast majority of the Iraqi people are grateful for what we did.”

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