What happened
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) campaigned with Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, Thursday as the Democratic presidential nominee ramped up her efforts to win over Republicans and GOP-leaning independents repelled by Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Standing under a “Country Over Party” banner, Cheney said she was “proudly” casting her ballot for Harris, her first time ever voting for a Democratic nominee, because “putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration” this election, “it is our duty.”
Who said what
The Harris-Cheney rally in Ripon, a “small city known as the birthplace of the Republican Party in the middle of a battleground state,” was an “exercise in unsubtle and unlikely campaign optics,” The New York Times said. The two women “agree on little politically beyond their distaste” for Trump and “had next to no relationship” before Cheney decided to endorse Harris last month.
Trump is “petty” and “vindictive” and voters should reject his “depraved cruelty,” said Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, before she jettisoned Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “Anyone who recklessly tramples on our democratic values as Donald Trump has” must never be president. Trump called Cheney a “stupid war hawk” yesterday on Fox News, then “reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election” at a Michigan rally “notable mainly for his continued false statements and exaggerations on a number of subjects,” the Times said.
What next?
Cheney is “set to continue campaigning against Trump next week,” The Washington Post said, joining three former Trump White House aides — Cassidy Hutchinson, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday, Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sarah Matthews — for a rally in the Philadelphia suburbs.