Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, has confirmed he will vote for Kamala Harris for president.
His daughter, Liz Cheney, who herself backed Ms Harris on Wednesday, announced her father’s endorsement on Friday during an onstage interview in Austin, Texas.
Like his daughter, Mr Cheney has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, notably during Ms Cheney’s ill-fated re-election campaign in 2022.
In a statement on Friday confirming his endorsement, Mr Cheney said of Trump: “He can never be trusted with power again.”
He added: “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.”
Ms Cheney announced her father’s endorsement on stage at the Texas Tribune festival in Austin.
When asked by interviewer Mark Liebovich how her father would be voting, she said: “Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
“Wow,” Mr Leibovich replied, as the audience cheered.
Trump campaign: ‘Who is Liz Cheney?’
Asked for comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “Who is Liz Cheney?”
The campaign confirmed Cheung was being sarcastic by also pointing to a comment Liz Cheney posted online four years ago in which she called Ms Harris a “radical liberal”.
Trump called the Cheneys “irrelevant RINO” in a social media post on Friday, using a term he applies to Republicans not loyal to him, which stands for “Republicans in Name Only”.
The Harris campaign said on Friday that the Cheneys had joined “a growing movement of Republicans putting country over party” by supporting the Democrat ticket.
Mr Cheney, 83, has made few if any public appearances over the past year or more. He has dealt with heart issues since his 40s and underwent a heart transplant in 2012.
His statement on Friday was similar to a 2022 campaign ad for Ms Cheney as she sought a fourth term as Wyoming’s lone congressperson. In it, he called Trump a “coward” for trying to “steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him”.
By a more than two-to-one margin, Ms Cheney lost her Republican primary to Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman.
Mr Cheney has been friends with Democrats over the years but never supported one for president.
Both Cheneys backed Trump in 2016, but after Ms Cheney criticised Trump’s foreign policy decisions and Trump attacked the “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq launched when Mr Cheney was vice president, their support waned.
In 2020 their home state of Wyoming delivered Trump his widest margin of victory.
By 2021, Ms Cheney also voted to impeach Trump and ran an investigation into him for the 2021 US Capitol riot.
Several other top Republicans have come out in support of Ms Harris while some, including Senator Mitt Romney and former Vice President Mike Pence, say they will be voting for the former president.
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