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  • Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, dies at 84

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, has died at the age of 84.Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.”His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade. Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Bush called Cheney a “decent, honorable man” and said his death was “a loss to the nation.”“History will remember him 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,” Bush said in a statement.Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “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.”In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.”Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.That bargain largely held up.”He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, has died at the age of 84.

    Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.

    “His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.

    Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

    “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

    Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade.

    Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    Bush called Cheney a “decent, honorable man” and said his death was “a loss to the nation.”

    “History will remember him 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,” Bush said in a statement.

    David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney is interviewed for ’The Presidents’ Gatekeepers’ project about White House Chiefs of Staff, July 15, 2011, in Jackson, Wyoming.

    Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

    “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “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.”

    In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.

    A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.

    His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.

    In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.

    Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.

    “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

    A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.

    He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.

    He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.

    For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.

    But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.

    Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.

    Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.

    With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.

    From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.

    That bargain largely held up.

    “He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”

    As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”

    His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.

    The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.

    When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.

    Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.

    Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.

    Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.

    On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.

    Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.

    Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.

    Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.

    Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.

    Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.

    Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.

    In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.

    In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.

    Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.

    He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

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  • Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, dies at 84

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, died Monday night at the age of 84. Cheney died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.”His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade. Funeral arrangements were not immediately available. Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “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.”In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.”Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.That bargain largely held up.”He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, died Monday night at the age of 84.

    Cheney died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.

    “His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.

    “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

    Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade.

    Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

    Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney is interviewed for ’The Presidents’ Gatekeepers’ project about White House Chiefs of Staff, July 15, 2011, in Jackson, Wyoming.

    Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

    “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “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.”

    In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.

    A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.

    His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.

    In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.

    Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.

    “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

    A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.

    He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.

    He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.

    For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.

    But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.

    Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.

    Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.

    With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.

    From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.

    That bargain largely held up.

    “He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”

    As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”

    His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.

    The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.

    When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.

    Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.

    Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.

    Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.

    On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.

    Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.

    Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.

    Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.

    Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.

    Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.

    Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.

    In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.

    In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.

    Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.

    He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

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  • Kamala Harris hints at another presidential run: ‘I am not done’

    Kamala Harris hints at another presidential run: ‘I am not done’

    ‘If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here’

    Updated: 10:56 AM PDT Oct 25, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ


    By Alejandra Jaramillo, CNN

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris has hinted she could make another bid for the White House in an interview with the BBC, saying she would “possibly” be president one day and expressing confidence that America will see a woman in the Oval Office in the future.Related video above: Trump administration demolishes part of East Wing for ballroomHarris marked her clearest indication yet that she might launch another presidential campaign in 2028, following her 2024 defeat to now-President Donald Trump, during an interview with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that will air Sunday.”I am not done,” the former vice president said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it’s in my bones,” she added.Reflecting on the possibility of running again, Harris told the BBC that her grandnieces would “in their lifetime, for sure” see a woman president.”Possibly,” Harris said when asked whether that woman could be her, confirming that she is still weighing her political future. Harris, however, emphasized that she has not made a final decision but continues to view herself as an active player in U.S. politics.Addressing polls that place her behind others for the Democratic ticket, Harris said she pays little attention to such numbers, saying, “If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.”Harris further argued that her predictions about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies have been proven right: “He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice — and he has done exactly that.”The former vice president went on to cite the short suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel by ABC after comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. The president celebrated the suspension at the time.”You look at what has happened in terms of how he has weaponized, for example, federal agencies going around after political satirists. His skin is so thin he couldn’t endure criticism from a joke and attempted to shut down an entire media organization in the process.”Harris also criticized American business leaders and institutions, whom she believes have been too quick to yield to Trump’s authority.”There are many that have capitulated since day one, who are bending the knee at the foot of a tyrant, I believe, for many reasons, including they want to be next to power, because they want to perhaps have a merger approved or avoid an investigation,” she told the BBC.

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris has hinted she could make another bid for the White House in an interview with the BBC, saying she would “possibly” be president one day and expressing confidence that America will see a woman in the Oval Office in the future.

    Related video above: Trump administration demolishes part of East Wing for ballroom

    Harris marked her clearest indication yet that she might launch another presidential campaign in 2028, following her 2024 defeat to now-President Donald Trump, during an interview with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that will air Sunday.

    “I am not done,” the former vice president said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it’s in my bones,” she added.

    Reflecting on the possibility of running again, Harris told the BBC that her grandnieces would “in their lifetime, for sure” see a woman president.

    “Possibly,” Harris said when asked whether that woman could be her, confirming that she is still weighing her political future. Harris, however, emphasized that she has not made a final decision but continues to view herself as an active player in U.S. politics.

    Addressing polls that place her behind others for the Democratic ticket, Harris said she pays little attention to such numbers, saying, “If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.”

    Harris further argued that her predictions about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies have been proven right: “He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice — and he has done exactly that.”

    The former vice president went on to cite the short suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel by ABC after comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. The president celebrated the suspension at the time.

    “You look at what has happened in terms of how he has weaponized, for example, federal agencies going around after political satirists. His skin is so thin he couldn’t endure criticism from a joke and attempted to shut down an entire media organization in the process.”

    Harris also criticized American business leaders and institutions, whom she believes have been too quick to yield to Trump’s authority.

    “There are many that have capitulated since day one, who are bending the knee at the foot of a tyrant, I believe, for many reasons, including they want to be next to power, because they want to perhaps have a merger approved or avoid an investigation,” she told the BBC.

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  • Kamala Harris hints at another presidential run: ‘I am not done’

    Kamala Harris hints at another presidential run: ‘I am not done’

    ‘If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here’

    Updated: 1:56 PM EDT Oct 25, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ


    By Alejandra Jaramillo, CNN

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris has hinted she could make another bid for the White House in an interview with the BBC, saying she would “possibly” be president one day and expressing confidence that America will see a woman in the Oval Office in the future.Related video above: Trump administration demolishes part of East Wing for ballroomHarris marked her clearest indication yet that she might launch another presidential campaign in 2028, following her 2024 defeat to now-President Donald Trump, during an interview with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that will air Sunday.”I am not done,” the former vice president said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it’s in my bones,” she added.Reflecting on the possibility of running again, Harris told the BBC that her grandnieces would “in their lifetime, for sure” see a woman president.”Possibly,” Harris said when asked whether that woman could be her, confirming that she is still weighing her political future. Harris, however, emphasized that she has not made a final decision but continues to view herself as an active player in U.S. politics.Addressing polls that place her behind others for the Democratic ticket, Harris said she pays little attention to such numbers, saying, “If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.”Harris further argued that her predictions about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies have been proven right: “He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice — and he has done exactly that.”The former vice president went on to cite the short suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel by ABC after comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. The president celebrated the suspension at the time.”You look at what has happened in terms of how he has weaponized, for example, federal agencies going around after political satirists. His skin is so thin he couldn’t endure criticism from a joke and attempted to shut down an entire media organization in the process.”Harris also criticized American business leaders and institutions, whom she believes have been too quick to yield to Trump’s authority.”There are many that have capitulated since day one, who are bending the knee at the foot of a tyrant, I believe, for many reasons, including they want to be next to power, because they want to perhaps have a merger approved or avoid an investigation,” she told the BBC.

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris has hinted she could make another bid for the White House in an interview with the BBC, saying she would “possibly” be president one day and expressing confidence that America will see a woman in the Oval Office in the future.

    Related video above: Trump administration demolishes part of East Wing for ballroom

    Harris marked her clearest indication yet that she might launch another presidential campaign in 2028, following her 2024 defeat to now-President Donald Trump, during an interview with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that will air Sunday.

    “I am not done,” the former vice president said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it’s in my bones,” she added.

    Reflecting on the possibility of running again, Harris told the BBC that her grandnieces would “in their lifetime, for sure” see a woman president.

    “Possibly,” Harris said when asked whether that woman could be her, confirming that she is still weighing her political future. Harris, however, emphasized that she has not made a final decision but continues to view herself as an active player in U.S. politics.

    Addressing polls that place her behind others for the Democratic ticket, Harris said she pays little attention to such numbers, saying, “If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.”

    Harris further argued that her predictions about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies have been proven right: “He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice — and he has done exactly that.”

    The former vice president went on to cite the short suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel by ABC after comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. The president celebrated the suspension at the time.

    “You look at what has happened in terms of how he has weaponized, for example, federal agencies going around after political satirists. His skin is so thin he couldn’t endure criticism from a joke and attempted to shut down an entire media organization in the process.”

    Harris also criticized American business leaders and institutions, whom she believes have been too quick to yield to Trump’s authority.

    “There are many that have capitulated since day one, who are bending the knee at the foot of a tyrant, I believe, for many reasons, including they want to be next to power, because they want to perhaps have a merger approved or avoid an investigation,” she told the BBC.

    Source link

  • Commentary: Did Kamala Harris just destroy her 2028 chances? Is Gavin Newsom glad she did?

    Democrats, despite their hypersensitive, bleeding-heart reputation, can be harsh. Ruthless, even.

    When it comes to picking their presidential nominee, it’s often one and done. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry were embraced and then, after leading their party to disappointing defeat, cast off like so many wads of wet tissue.

    Compare that with Republicans, who not only believe in second chances but, more often than not, seem to prefer their presidential candidates recycled. Over the last half century, all but a few of the GOP’s nominees have had at least one failed White House bid on their resume.

    The roster of retreads includes the current occupant of the Oval Office, who is only the second president in U.S. history to regain the perch after losing it four years prior.

    Why the difference? It would take a psychologist or geneticist to determine if there’s something in the minds or molecular makeup of party faithful, which could explain their varied treatment of those humbled and vanquished.

    Regardless, it suggests the blowback facing Kamala Harris and the campaign diary she published last week is happening right on cue.

    And it doesn’t portend well for another try at the White House in 2028, should the former vice president and U.S. senator from California pursue that path.

    The criticism has come in assorted flavors.

    Joe Biden loyalists — many of whom were never great fans of Harris — have bristled at her relatively mild criticisms of the obviously aged and physically declining president. (She leaves it to her husband, former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, to vent about the “impossible, s— jobs” Harris was given and, in spite of that, the failure of the president and first lady to defend Harris during her low points.)

    The notable lack of self-blame has rankled other Democrats. Aside from some couldas and shouldas, Harris largely ascribes her defeat to insufficient time to make her case to voters — just 107 days, the title of her book — which hardly sits well with those who feel Harris squandered the time she did have.

    More generally, some Democrats fault the former vice president for resurfacing, period, rather than slinking off and disappearing forever into some deep, dark hole. It’s a familiar gripe each time the party struggles to move past a presidential defeat; Hillary Clinton faced a similar backlash when she published her inside account after losing to Donald Trump in 2016.

    That critique assumes great masses of voters devour campaign memoirs with the same voracious appetite as those who surrender their Sundays to the Beltway chat shows, or mainline political news like a continuous IV drip.

    They do not.

    Let the record show Democrats won the White House in 2020 even though Clinton bobbed back up in 2017 and, for a short while, thwarted the party’s fervent desire to “turn the page.”

    But there are those avid consumers of campaigns and elections, and for the political fiends among us Harris offers plenty of fizz, much of it involving her party peers and prospective 2028 rivals.

    Pete Buttigieg, the meteoric star of the 2020 campaign, was her heartfelt choice for vice president, but Harris said she feared the combination of a Black woman and gay running mate would exceed the load-bearing capacity of the electorate. (News to me, Buttigieg said after Harris revealed her thinking, and an underestimation of the American people.)

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the runner-up to Harris’ ultimate vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, comes across as unseemly salivating and greedily lusting after the job. (He fired back by suggesting Harris has some splainin’ to do about what she knew of Biden’s infirmities and when she knew it.)

    Harris implies Govs. JB Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer of Illinois and Michigan, respectively, were insufficiently gung-ho after Biden stepped aside and she became the Democratic nominee-in-waiting.

    But for California readers, the most toothsome morsel involves Harris’ longtime frenemy, Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    The two, who rose to political power in the early 2000s on parallel tracks in San Francisco, have long had a complicated relationship, mixing mutual aid with jealousy and jostling.

    In her book, Harris recounts the hours after Biden’s sudden withdrawal, when she began telephoning top Democrats around the country to lock in their support. In contrast to the enthusiasm many displayed, Newsom responded tersely with a text message: “Hiking. Will call back.”

    He never did, Harris noted, pointedly, though Newsom did issue a full-throated endorsement within hours, which the former vice president failed to mention.

    It’s small-bore stuff. But the fact Harris chose to include that anecdote speaks to the tetchiness underlying the warmth and fuzziness that California’s two most prominent Democrats put on public display.

    Will the two face off in 2028?

    Riding the promotional circuit, Harris has repeatedly sidestepped the inevitable questions about another presidential bid.

    “That’s not my focus right now,” she told Rachel Maddow, in a standard-issue non-denial denial. For his part, Newsom is obviously running, though he won’t say so.

    There would be something operatic, or at least soap-operatic, about the two longtime competitors openly vying for the country’s ultimate political prize — though it’s hard to see Democrats, with their persistent hunger for novelty, turning to Harris or her left-coast political doppelganger as their savior.

    Meantime, the two are back on parallel tracks, though seemingly headed in opposite directions.

    While Newsom is looking to build Democratic bridges, Harris is burning hers down.

    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • Commentary: Should Kamala Harris be protected? At what cost?

    When Kamala Harris was contemplating a run for California governor, one of her supposed considerations was the security detail that attends the state’s chief executive.

    The services of a life-preserving, ego-boosting retinue of intimidating protectors — picture dark glasses, earpiece, stern visage — were cited by more than one Harris associate, past and present, as a factor in her deliberations. These were not Trumpers or Harris haters looking to impugn or embarrass the former vice president.

    According to one of those associates, Harris has been accompanied nonstop by an official driver and person with a gun since 2003, when she was elected San Francisco district attorney. One could easily grow accustomed to that level of comfort and status, not to mention the pleasure of never having to personally navigate the 101 or 405 freeways at rush hour.

    That is, of course, a perfectly terrible and selfish reason to run for governor, if ever it was a part of Harris’ thinking. To her credit, the reason she chose to not run was a very good one: Harris simply “didn’t feel called” to pursue the job, in the words of one political advisor.

    Now, however, the matter of Harris’ personal protection has become a topic of heated discussion and debate, which is hardly surprising in an age when everything has become politicized, including “and” and “the.”

    There is plenty of bad faith to go around.

    Last month, President Trump abruptly revoked Harris’ Secret Service protection. The security arrangement for vice presidents typically lasts for six months after they leave office, allowing them to quietly fade into ever greater obscurity. But before vacating the White House, President Biden signed an executive order extending protection for Harris for an additional year. (Former presidents are guarded by Secret Service details for life.)

    As the first female, first Black and first Asian American vice president, Harris faced, as they say in the protective-service business, an elevated threat level while serving in the post. In the 230-odd days since Harris left office, there is no reason to believe racism and misogyny, not to mention wild-eyed partisan hatred, have suddenly abated in this great land of ours.

    And there remain no small number of people crazy enough to violently act on those impulses.

    The president could have been gracious and extended Harris’ protection. But expecting grace out of Trump is like counting on a starving Doberman to show restraint when presented a bloody T-bone steak.

    “This is another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation in the form of firings, the revoking of security clearances and more,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass angrily declared.

    True.

    Though Bass omitted the bit about six months being standard operating procedure, which would have at least offered some context. It wasn’t as though Harris was being treated differently than past vice presidents.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly stepped into the breach, providing Harris protection by the California Highway Patrol. Soon after, The Times’ Richard Winton broke the news that Los Angeles Police Department officers meant to be fighting crime in hard-hit areas of the city were instead providing security for Harris as a supplement to the CHP.

    Not a great look. Or the best use of police resources.

    Thus followed news that officers had been pulled off Harris’ security detail after internal criticism; supposedly the LAPD’s involvement had always been intended as a stopgap measure.

    All well and good, until the conservative-leaning Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, saw fit to issue a gratuitously snarky statement condemning the hasty arrangement. Its board of directors described Harris as “a failed presidential candidate who also happens to be a multi-millionaire, with multiple homes … who can easily afford to pay for her own security.”

    As if Harris’ 2024 defeat — she lost the popular vote to Trump by a scant 1.5%, it might be noted — was somehow relevant.

    To be certain, Harris and her husband, attorney Doug Emhoff, won’t miss any hot meals as they shelter in their 3,500-square-foot Brentwood home. (The one house they own.) But they’re not stupid-rich either.

    One person in the private-security business told Winton that a certain household name pays him $1,000 a day for a 12-hour shift. That can quickly add up and put a noticeable dent in your back account, assuming your name isn’t Elon or Taylor or Zuckerberg or Bezos.

    Setting aside partisanship — if that’s still possible — and speaking bluntly, there’s something to be said for ensuring Harris doesn’t die a violent death at the hands of some crazed assailant.

    The CHP’s Dignitary Protection Section is charged with protecting all eight of California’s constitutional officers — we’re talking folks such as the insurance commissioner and state controller — as well as the first lady and other elected officials, as warranted. The statutory authority also extends to former constitutional officers, which would include Harris, who served six years as state attorney general.

    Surely there’s room in California’s $321-billion budget to make sure nothing terrible happens to one of the state’s most prominent and credentialed citizens. It doesn’t have to be an open-ended, lifetime commitment to Harris’ protection, but an arrangement that could be periodically reviewed, as time passes and potential danger wanes.

    Serving in elected office can be rough, especially in these incendiary times. The price shouldn’t include having to spend the rest of your life looking nervously over your shoulder.

    Or draining your life savings, so you don’t have to.

    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • A Food Fight at the Kids’ Table

    A Food Fight at the Kids’ Table

    Suddenly, it just tumbled out: “Honestly, every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.”

    That was former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s rebuke of businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, easily the best line of Wednesday night’s messy and awkward GOP primary debate. Ramaswamy, for his part, produced his own meme-worthy quote during a heated exchange with Senator Tim Scott: “Thank you for speaking while I’m interrupting.”

    Such was the onstage energy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum: Chaotic, sloppy, largely substance-free. Seven candidates desperately fought for fresh relevance; none of them came away with it. Rather than pitching themselves as the candidate who can beat former President Donald Trump, these Republicans seemed to be operating most of the time in an alternate universe, in which Trump was absent not just from the stage, but from the race.

    Eight years ago, so many candidates were vying for the Republican nomination that the party took to splitting primary debates into two sessions: the main event and the undercard. The latter contest was mocked as the “kids’ table” debate. So far this time around, there’s only one unified debate night. Nevertheless, Trump has such a commanding lead over his challengers that, for the second debate in a row, he hasn’t even bothered to show up and speak. Voters have no reason to believe he’ll be at any of the other contests. Trump counter-programmed last month’s Fox News debate by sitting down for a sympathetic interview with the former Fox star Tucker Carlson. On Wednesday, Trump delivered a speech in Michigan, where a powerful union—United Auto Workers—are in the second week of a strike.

    All seven candidates who qualified for the debate—individuals with honorifics such as “governor,” “senator,” and “former vice president”—spent the evening arguing at the kids’ table. Barring some sort of medical emergency, Trump seems like the inevitable 2024 GOP nominee. As Michael Scherer of The Washington Post pointed out on X (formerly Twitter), the candidates on stage were collectively polling at 36 percent. If they were to join forces and become one person (think seven Republicans stacked in a trenchcoat), Trump would still be winning by 20 percent.

    Read: A parade of listless vessels

    How many other ways can you say this? The race is effectively over. So what, then, were they all doing there? A cynic would tell you they’re merely running for second place—for a shot at a cabinet position, maybe even VP.

    One candidate decidedly not running for vice president is Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has taken to (gently) attacking his old boss. Nor does former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seem to want a sidekick or administration gig. Christie has staked his entire campaign on calling out Trump’s sins, and, so far, it’s not working. Earlier on Wednesday, Christie shared a photo of himself at a recent NFL game, with a cringeworthy nod to new Kansas City Chiefs fan Taylor Swift: “I was just a guy in the bleachers on Sunday… but after tonight, Trump will know we are never ever getting back together.”

    At the debate, Christie stared directly into the camera like Macho Man Randy Savage, pointer finger and all, to deliver what amounted to a professional wrestling taunt. “Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself!” Christie began. “You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things, and let me tell you what’s going to happen.”

    [Here it comes]

    “You keep doing that, no one up here’s gonna call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re gonna call you Donald Duck.”

    “Alright,” moderator Dana Perino said.

    The crowd appeared to laugh, cheer, boo, and groan.

    The auto-worker’s strike, and criticisms of the larger American economy, received significant attention at the debate. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum laid the strike “at Joe Biden’s feet.” Pence came ready with a zinger: “Joe Biden doesn’t belong on a picket line, he belongs on the unemployment line.” (Another Pence joke about sleeping with a teacher—his wife—didn’t quite land.)

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once seen as Trump’s closest rival, stood center stage but spent most of the night struggling to connect as all the candidates intermittently talked over one another. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, perhaps trying to fight back against those who claim he lacks charisma, frequently went on the attack, most notably against Ramaswamy, who, in the previous debate, claimed his rivals were “bought and paid for.” Later, Scott attacked DeSantis for his past controversial comments about race: “There is not a redeeming quality in slavery,” Scott said. But he followed that up a moment later with another sound byte: “America is not a racist country.”

    Read: The GOP primary is a field of broken dreams

    However earnest and honest Scott’s message may be, it was impossible to hear his words without thinking of the man he’s running against. So again: What was everyone doing Wednesday night? In an alternate reality, a red-state candidate like Scott, Haley, or Burgum might cruise to the GOP nomination. In a way, Fox Business, itself, seemed to broadcast tonight’s proceedings in that strange other world. The network kept playing retro Reagan clips as the debate came in and out of commercial breaks. And those ads? One featured South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem—not a 2024 presidential candidate, but certainly a potential VP pick—making a pitch for people to move to her sparsely populated state. Another ad argued that the Biden administration’s plan to ban menthol cigarettes would be a boon to Mexican drug cartels. What?

    It was all a sideshow. Trump’s team seemed to know it, too. With just over five minutes left in the debate, the former president’s campaign blasted out a statement to reporters from a senior advisor: “Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest being dominated by President Trump.” For all of Trump’s lies, he and his acolytes can occasionally be excruciatingly honest.

    John Hendrickson

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  • Magical Thinking in Milwaukee

    Magical Thinking in Milwaukee

    One couldn’t help but pity the dutiful campaign staffers and surrogates who trickled into the spin room in Milwaukee last night. They arrived with an unenviable task: to convince reporters that their respective candidates had won the first debate of the Republican presidential primary.

    To anyone who had watched, it was plain, of course, that none of the eight Republicans onstage had won in any meaningful sense. Donald Trump—facing four indictments and leading in the polls by 40 points—didn’t even bother to show up. And with many voters tuning in to the race for the first time, Trump’s rivals struggled to show they were equipped to take him down. In fact, few even tried. The former president’s name barely came up in the debate’s first hour—and when the conversation did turn to the subject of his growing rap sheet, most of the candidates defended him. All but two pledged to support Trump as the party’s nominee even if he is convicted. By the end of the evening, Trump’s path to renomination looked clearer than ever.

    So how to spin this state of affairs if you work for one of the also-rans?

    The answer, it turned out, was simple: Ignore it.

    In multiple interviews after last night’s debate, I asked GOP campaign representatives how they planned to win the primary if their candidates were unwilling to directly confront Trump. Some offered platitudes—“This is a marathon, not a sprint.” Others gestured vaguely at plans to criticize the front-runner in the future. Most flatly refused to acknowledge the reality of Trump’s current dominance in the race. They preferred to pretend.

    Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a supporter of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, scoffed when I mentioned Trump’s lead in the polls. “Go back and look at where Ted [Cruz] was in the numbers in 2016,” Roy instructed me.

    “But … Cruz didn’t win the primary,” I replied, confused.

    “Well, but he won Iowa!”

    Matt Gorman, a spokesperson for Senator Tim Scott’s campaign, complained that reporters and pundits were overstating the likelihood of another Trump nomination. “Too many people think it’s inevitable,” he said. But when asked how that outcome might be avoided, Gorman had only wishful thinking to offer: “We hope that [Trump] debates. That’s our hope.”

    Read: A parade of listless vessels

    It’s easy to see why, in an ideal world, Trump’s rivals would want to get him back on the debate stage. Several of the candidates managed strong moments last night. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley earned loud applause after calling out Republicans in Washington for adding trillions of dollars to the national debt: “Our kids are never going to forgive us for this.” Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie offered a passionate defense of former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to go along with Trump’s ploy to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021: “He deserves not grudging credit. He deserves our thanks as Americans for putting his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States before personal, political, and unfair pressure.” And the 38-year-old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy successfully made himself the evening’s main character with a rat-a-tat of Trumpian talking points, one-liners, and comic insults that aggravated his opponents as the debate wore on.

    Some of the debate’s sharpest moments came when the candidates were tangling with Ramaswamy. Christie derided him as an “amateur” who “sounds like ChatGPT.” Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, snapped at him, “You have no foreign-policy experience, and it shows.” Even Pence, who typically affects the manner of a sleepy Sunday-school teacher, seemed to repeatedly lose his cool with Ramaswamy. “Now is not the time for on-the-job training,” Pence said at one point. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie.” (This counts as a harsh burn for Pence.)

    On social media and in the press room, theories abounded as to why Ramaswamy seemed to be getting under so many of his opponents’ skin. Maybe it was generational—the know-it-all Millennial with the irritating high-school-debate patter disrespecting his Boomer elders. Or maybe it was his “Ted Cruz energy”—that signature blend of arrogance and smarminess that seems calibrated to repel. Certainly it didn’t help that Ramaswamy insisted on dismissing his opponents as “super-PAC puppets.”

    Read: Vivek Ramaswamy’s truth

    But perhaps the onstage hostility had less to do with Ramaswamy than with that other blustery political neophyte who cartwheeled into GOP politics one day on a whim and promptly overshadowed the rest of the field. With Trump refusing to participate in the debates, Ramaswamy made for a serviceable proxy. (Certainly, his campaign seems to share Trump’s taste for trolling: When I asked Chris Grant, a Ramaswamy adviser, about Pence’s repeated outbursts at the candidate last night, Grant laughed and then giddily compared the former vice president to the grandpa on The Simpsons yelling at a cloud.) Still, sinking Ramaswamy—who currently polls in the high single digits—won’t meaningfully change the shape of the field. The only way to pull that off is to take votes away from the front-runner. And no one seems to have a clear plan to do that.

    Back in January, I wrote about the “magical thinking” that pervaded the GOP ahead of 2024. Virtually everyone in the party I talked with—donors, strategists, elected officials—wanted to move on from Trump, but no one was willing to do anything about it. Instead, they all seemed to be waiting for the problem to resolve itself, whether via criminal charges or death or some other miraculous development. “There is a desire for deus ex machina,” one GOP consultant told me at the time. “It’s like 2016 all over again, only more fatalistic.”

    Seven months later, on a debate stage in Milwaukee, we witnessed the natural consequence of this attitude. Trump—still alive—is gliding toward his third consecutive presidential nomination while his rivals squabble with one another.

    McKay Coppins

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  • The GOP Primary Is a Field of Broken Dreams

    The GOP Primary Is a Field of Broken Dreams

    People near me at the Iowa State Fair were frantic. “Do you see him yet?” they panted. “Do you think he’ll come out into the crowd to talk?” When the presence of Secret Service officers made it clear that former President Donald Trump would appear at the Steer ’N Stein restaurant on the Grand Concourse, fairgoers formed a line whose end was out of sight.

    Not all of them could squeeze into the restaurant, so they filled the street outside, one giant blob of eager, sweating Iowans. When the former president finally appeared, the scrum was so dense that they could barely make out his silhouette through the restaurant’s open side. “You know, the other candidates came here, and they had like six people,” Trump’s giddy voice said through the speakers above us. The audience responded with hoots and cheers.

    David Axelrod: The indictment is stunning. Will Trump supporters care?

    One of the few rules of American politics to have withstood the weirdness of these past tumultuous years is that anyone who wants to be president of the United States must endure both the many splendors and the equally many ritual humiliations of the Iowa State Fair. It is an essential audition, at least for the GOP. (The Democratic Party has recently shuffled the order of its primary season, demoting the Iowa caucus from its first-in-the-nation status.)

    If a Republican candidate, drenched in sweat and stuffed with fried butter, can pique the interest of Iowa’s choosy voters, then that candidate has a real shot in the caucuses and, perhaps, the White House. Sometimes, a long-shot outsider can work the crowds and gain an unexpected edge, as Rick Santorum did in 2012, and Ted Cruz did in 2016.

    So the fair is a place to charm and be charmed. Early on in the weekend, it seemed to be working its magic.

    “He’s really very engaging,” Shirley Burgess, from Des Moines, said of Mike Pence. “I thought he delivers a much clearer message in person than what I’m getting from him on TV.” The former vice president had just wrapped one of several “Fair-Side Chats” hosted by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds. This was a new feature at the fair, at which the governor asks the candidates such hard-hitting questions as “What’s your favorite walkout song?”

    The night before, Pence had been heckled by a man who asked how he was doing “after Tucker Carlson ruined your career.” Another said, “I’m glad they didn’t hang you!”

    But on Friday morning, Pence drew a respectful crowd for his conversation with Reynolds at J.R.’s Southpork Ranch. Attendees asked him polite questions, and half a dozen people personally thanked him for his “integrity” when Trump was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    Pence had company, however. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy also attracted crowds at the Pork Ranch and at the Des Moines Register’s Soapbox venue. Most of the undecided Iowans who attended told me that they’d supported Trump in 2016 and in 2020. These voters appreciated his service, they said, but after eight years of idiotic rants on social media, baseless but relentless assertions of election fraud, and a string of criminal indictments, they were hankering for some new energy. You know, a leader without so much baggage, they told me; someone more … classy.

    “Everything out of his mouth is like, ‘Shut up, Donald,’” Charles Dunlap, a two-time Trump voter from Johnston, Iowa, told me. He was eager to hear from Ramaswamy and Haley, people he believed would “institute similar policies” to Trump’s—just without the drama.

    But the intimate enchantment of the fair—the promise of thoughtful, measured consideration—dissipated around 1 p.m. Saturday, when the former president arrived. What very quickly became clear was that the Trump-exhausted, change-minded Iowans I’d met that morning were in the minority. Most folks? They still love Trump.

    The former president skipped possible speaking slots at the Soapbox and with Reynolds (because of his strange beef with the governor), but showed up to mingle with his people. They packed into every fair establishment where the president might conceivably speak. Because his event wasn’t on any official schedule, everyone was kept guessing. Parts of the fairground came to a standstill. People who just wanted to slurp lemonade and admire the prize-winning steers were annoyed. “Why did we have to come on the day that all the politicians are here?” a man pushing a stroller through the throng asked his wife. (Almost every Iowan, for the record, has at one point uttered the phrase.)

    Given his commanding lead in the GOP primary polling, it’s not so shocking that Trump’s presence would create such fervor. But seeing it, feeling it, was different. By contrast, the crowds that had gathered for the other Republican candidates didn’t seem impressive at all. Suddenly, the entire GOP primary contest felt painfully futile, pathetic even. Why are they even doing this? For the also-rans—basically, the rest of the field already—was suffering the abuses of the campaign trail worth even the best-case scenario of being anointed Trump’s running mate?

    On Saturday, while Pence stood in the sun flipping pork burgers, people in the crowd whispered about him. “Look at him sweat,” someone behind me said. “He’s a dweeb, and so is DeSantis,” a young man from Cedar Rapids named Jacob, who declined to give his last name, told me. “You just want to take their lunch money. It’s instinct.” Ramaswamy, whose big personality has charmed many Republicans, apparently felt the need to put on a non-dweeb showing after his interview with the governor, and rapped confidently to the Eminem song “Lose Yourself.” A sea of silver-haired onlookers, who found themselves trapped near the front of the stage, were obliged to awkwardly bob along.

    DeSantis, more than anyone else, suffered at the fair. While he spoke with Reynolds, a plane flew in circles overhead, carrying a long sign that read Be likable, Ron! DeSantis pretended not to notice it. When the Florida governor took his turn in the Pork Tent, Trump supporters gathered behind his photo op, wearing green-and-yellow trucker hats handed out by the Trump campaign. They chanted and yelled insults as DeSantis and his wife flipped burgers.

    And when Trump finally arrived on Saturday afternoon, he brought with him a posse of Florida lawmakers who had endorsed him over DeSantis. (Representative Matt Gaetz warmed up the crowd by saying that he’d grilled burgers well done at the Pork Tent, but “the most done you can be is Ron DeSantis.”) Will the humiliation pay off in the end? DeSantis’s campaign has to hope so. At least in Iowa, the Florida governor is running somewhat closer to Trump than he is nationally.

    Earlier in the day, I’d interviewed Matt Wells, a DeSantis supporter and a county chair from Washington, Iowa, who had been following the candidate around the fair all morning. Trump’s people “don’t really know what they’re doing; it’s all an emotional thing,” he told me. Wells worked for Ted Cruz’s campaign in 2016. They’d had a strong ground game then, as DeSantis does now, he said. “Trump,” Wells added, “doesn’t have any ground game here.”

    Helen Lewis: The humiliation of Ron DeSantis

    Cruz may have won Iowa, but he quite memorably did not go on to win the 2016 election. I was about to bring up this fact when someone near us gasped. A dozen fingers pointed toward the sky, and people began to scream with excitement. There, in the bright-blue ocean above us, was a plane with TRUMP emblazoned on its side heading for the nearby airport. Someone whispered, “Did I tell you that I shook his hand twice?” The clamor grew louder.

    Trump would be here soon. The man, the myth, had landed.

    Elaine Godfrey

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  • Donald Trump Is on the Wrong Side of the Religious Right

    Donald Trump Is on the Wrong Side of the Religious Right

    The sanctuary buzzed as Mike Pence climbed into the elevated pulpit, standing 15 feet above the pews, a Celtic cross over his left shoulder. The former vice president had spoken here, at Hillsdale College, the private Christian school tucked into the knolls of southern Michigan, on several previous occasions. But this was his first time inside Christ Chapel, the magnificent, recently erected campus cathedral inspired by the St. Martin-in-the-Fields parish of England. The space offers a spiritual refuge for young people trying to find their way in the world. On this day in early March, however, it was a political proving ground, a place of testing for an older man who knows what he believes but, like the students, is unsure of exactly where he’s headed.

    “I came today to Christ Chapel simply to tell all of you that, even when it doesn’t look like it, be confident that God is still working,” Pence told the Hillsdale audience. “In your life, and in mine, and in the life of this nation.”

    It only stands to reason that a man who felt God’s hand on his selection to serve alongside Donald Trump—the Lord working in mysterious ways and all—now feels called to help America heal from Trump’s presidency. It’s why Pence titled his memoir, which describes his split with Trump over the January 6 insurrection, So Help Me God. It’s why, as he travels the country preparing a presidential bid, he speaks to themes of redemption and reconciliation. It’s why he has spent the early days of the invisible primary courting evangelical Christian activists. And it’s why, for one of the first major speeches of his unofficial 2024 campaign, he came to Hillsdale, offering repeated references to scripture while speaking about the role of religion in public life.

    Read: Mike Pence refuses to connect the dots

    Piety aside, raw political calculation was at work. Trump’s relationship with the evangelical movement—once seemingly shatterproof, then shaky after his violent departure from the White House—is now in pieces, thanks to his social-media tirade last fall blaming pro-lifers for the Republicans’ lackluster midterm performance. Because of his intimate, longtime ties to the religious right, Pence understands the extent of the damage. He is close personal friends with the organizational leaders who have fumed about it; he knows that the former president has refused to make any sort of peace offering to the anti-abortion community and is now effectively estranged from its most influential leaders.

    According to people who have spoken with Pence, he believes that this erosion of support among evangelicals represents Trump’s greatest vulnerability in the upcoming primary—and his own greatest opportunity to make a play for the GOP nomination.

    But he isn’t the only one.

    Although Pence possesses singular insights into the insular world of social-conservative politics, numerous other Republicans are aware of Trump’s emerging weakness and are preparing to make a play for conservative Christian voters. Some of these efforts will be more sincere—more rooted in a shared belief system—than others. What unites them is a common recognition that, for the first time since he secured the GOP nomination in 2016, Trump has a serious problem with a crucial bloc of his coalition.

    The scale of his trouble is difficult to overstate. In my recent conversations with some two dozen evangelical leaders—many of whom asked not to be named, all of whom backed Trump in 2016, throughout his presidency, and again in 2020—not a single one would commit to supporting him in the 2024 Republican primary. And this was all before the speculation of his potential arrest on charges related to paying hush-money to his porn-star paramour back in 2016.

    “I think people want to move on. They want to look to the future; they want someone to cast a vision,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, who spoke at Trump’s nominating convention in 2016 and offered counsel throughout his presidency.

    At this time eight years ago, Perkins was heading up a secretive operation that sought to rally evangelical support around a single candidate. One by one, all the GOP presidential aspirants met privately with Perkins and his group of Christian influencers for an audition, a process by which Trump made initial contact with some prominent leaders of the religious right. Perkins probably won’t lead a similar effort this time around—“It was a lot of work,” he told me—but he and his allies have begun meeting with Republican contenders to gauge the direction of their campaigns. His message has been simple: Some of Trump’s most reliable supporters are now up for grabs, but they won’t be won over with the half measures of the pre-Trump era.

    “Oddly enough, it was Donald Trump of all people who raised the expectations of evangelical voters. They know they can win now,” Perkins said. “They want that same level of fight.”

    It’s one of the defining political statistics of the current political era: Trump carried 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016, according to exit polling, and performed similarly in 2020. But the real measure of his grip on this demographic was seen during his four years in office: Even amid dramatic dips in his popularity and approval rating, white evangelicals were consistently Trump’s most loyal supporters, sticking by him at rates that far exceeded those of other parts of his political coalition. Because Trump secured signature victories for conservative Christians—most notably, appointing the three Supreme Court justices who, last year, helped overturn Roe v. Wade—there was reason to expect that loyalty to carry over into his run for the presidency in 2024.

    From the June 2022 issue: How politics poisoned the evangelical Church

    And then Trump sabotaged himself. Desperate to dodge culpability for the Republican Party’s poor performance in the November midterm elections, Trump blamed the “abortion issue.” He suggested that moderate voters had been spooked by some of the party’s restrictive proposals, while pro-lifers, after half a century of intense political engagement, had grown complacent following the Dobbs ruling. This scapegoating didn’t go over well with social-conservative leaders. For many of them, the transaction they had entered into with Trump in 2016—their support in exchange for his policies—was validated by the fall of Roe. Yet now the former president was distancing himself from the anti-abortion movement while refusing to accept responsibility for promoting bad candidates who lost winnable races. (Trump’s campaign declined to comment for this story.)

    It felt like betrayal. Trump’s evangelical allies had stood dutifully behind him for four years, excusing all manner of transgressions and refusing countless opportunities to cast him off. Some had even convinced themselves that he had become a believer—if not an actual believer in Christ, despite those prayer-circle photo ops in the Oval Office, then a believer in the anti-abortion cause after previously having described himself as “very pro-choice.” Now the illusion was gone. In text messages, emails, and conference calls, some of the country’s most active social conservatives began expressing a willingness to support an alternative to Trump in 2024.

    “A lot of people were very put off by those comments … It made people wonder if in some way he’d gone back to some of the sentiments he had long before becoming a Republican candidate,” said Scott Walker, the former Wisconsin governor, who runs the Young America’s Foundation and sits on the board of an anti-abortion group. Walker, himself an evangelical and the son of a pastor, added, “I think it opened the door for a lot of them to consider other candidates.”

    The most offensive part of Trump’s commentary was his ignorance of the new, post-Roe reality of Republican politics. Publicly and privately, he spoke of abortion like an item struck from his to-do list, believing the issue was effectively resolved by the Supreme Court’s ruling. Meanwhile, conservatives were preparing for a new and complicated phase of the fight, and Trump was nowhere to be found. He didn’t even bother with damage control following his November outburst, anti-abortion leaders said, because he didn’t understand how fundamentally out of step he was with his erstwhile allies.

    “He thinks it will go away, but it won’t,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, told me. “That’s not me lacking in gratitude for how we got here, because I know how we got here. But that part is done. Thank you. Now what?”

    Read: What winning did to the anti-abortion movement

    Before long, evangelical leaders were publicly airing their long-held private complaints about Trump. Mike Evans, an original member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, told The Washington Post that Trump “used us to win the White House” and then turned Christians into cult members “glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.” David Lane, a veteran evangelical organizer whose email blasts reach many thousands of pastors and church leaders, wrote that Trump’s “vision of making America as a nation great again has been put on the sidelines, while the mission and the message are now subordinate to personal grievances and self-importance.” Addressing a group of Christian lawmakers after the election, James Robison, a well-known televangelist who also advised Trump, compared him to a “little elementary schoolchild.” Everett Piper, the former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, reacted to the midterms by writing in The Washington Times, “The take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go. If he’s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.”

    Perkins said that he’s still in touch with Trump and wouldn’t rule out backing his primary campaign in 2024. (Like everyone else I spoke with, Perkins said he won’t hesitate to support Trump if he wins the nomination.) He’s also a longtime friend to Pence, and told me he has been in recent communication with the former vice president. In speaking of the two men, Perkins described the same dilemma I heard from other social-conservative leaders.

    “Donald Trump came onto the playground, found the bully that had been pushing evangelicals around, and he punched them. That’s what endeared us to him,” Perkins explained. “But the challenge is, he went a little too far. He had too much of an edge … What we’re looking for, quite frankly, is a cross between Mike Pence and Donald Trump.”

    Who fits that description? Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been blasting out scripture-laden fundraising emails while aggressively courting evangelical leaders, making the case that his competence—and proud, publicly declared Christian beliefs—would make him the ultimate advocate for the religious right. Tim Scott, who has daydreamed about quitting the U.S. Senate to attend seminary, built the soft launch of his campaign around a “Faith in America” tour and is speaking to hundreds of pastors this week on a private “National Faith Briefing” call. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is known less for her devoutness than her opportunism, invited the televangelist John Hagee to deliver the invocation at her campaign announcement last month.

    Trump’s campaign is banking on these candidates, plus Pence, fragmenting the hard-core evangelical vote in the Iowa caucuses, while he cleans up with the rest of the conservative base.

    There is another Republican who could crash that scenario. And yet, that candidate—the one who might best embody the mix that Perkins spoke of—is the one making the least effort to court evangelicals.

    In January, at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, D.C., Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won a 2024 presidential straw poll in dominant fashion: 54 percent to Trump’s 19 percent, with every other Republican stuck in single digits. This seemed to portend a new day in the conservative movement: Having had several months to process the midterm results, the thousands of activists who came to D.C. for the annual March for Life were clearly signaling not just their desire to move on from Trump, but also their preference for the young governor who had just won reelection by 1.5 million votes in the country’s biggest battleground state.

    There was some surprise in early March when the group Students for Life of America—which had organized the D.C. conference in January—met in Naples, Florida, for its Post-Roe Generation Gala. The event drew activists from around the country. Pence, a longtime friend of the group, had secured the keynote speaking slot. But DeSantis was nowhere to be found. Some attendees wondered why there was no video sent by his staff, no footprint from his political operation, not even a tweet from the governor acknowledging the event in his own backyard.

    Mark Leibovich: Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

    Kristan Hawkins, the Students for Life president, cautioned against reading anything into this, explaining that her group had not formally invited DeSantis, instead reserving the spotlight for Pence. At the same time, she complained that DeSantis has had zero engagement with her or her organization, “not even a back-channel relationship.” For all of DeSantis’s culture warring with the left—over education and wokeism and drag shows—Hawkins argued that he has largely ignored the abortion issue.

    “So many people are astounded when I tell them that Florida has one of the highest abortion rates in the country. It’s the only Republican-controlled state in the top 10,” Hawkins told me. “Folks on social media are like, ‘You’re wrong! Florida has DeSantis!’”

    She sighed. “Checking the box, yes. When asked, he’ll affirm ‘pro-life.’ But leading the charge in Tallahassee? We haven’t seen it.”

    This squared with what I’ve heard from many other evangelical leaders—in terms of both the policy approach and the personal dealings. “He doesn’t have any relationships with me or the people in my world,” Perkins told me. “I’ve been cheering for him … but he hasn’t made any real outreach to us. That’s a weakness. I guess he sort of keeps his own counsel.” Dannenfelser was the lone organizational head who told me she’d gotten some recent face time with DeSantis, while noting that she, not the governor or his team, had requested the meeting.

    DeSantis has been made aware of these complaints, according to people who have spoken with the governor. (His political team declined to comment for this story.) John Stemberger, the president of Florida Family Policy Council, told me that DeSantis had recently attended a prayer breakfast held by the state’s leading anti-abortion activists, and that his team has “slowly but methodically” begun its outreach to leaders in early-nominating states. However sluggish his efforts to date, DeSantis now stands to benefit from the good fortune of great timing: Having signed a 15-week abortion ban into law just last year, he is now supporting a so-called heartbeat bill that Republicans are advancing through the state legislature. The timing of Florida’s implementation of this new law, which would ban abortions after six weeks, will roughly coincide with the governor’s expected presidential launch later this spring.

    “He’s got a robust agenda, and he’ll be doing robust outreach soon enough,” Stemberger said.

    Even without the outreach, DeSantis is well positioned to capture a significant share of the Christian conservative vote. Among pastors and congregants I’ve met around the country, his name-identification has soared over the past year and a half, the result of high-profile policy fights and his landslide reelection win. Last month, a Monmouth University national survey of Republican voters found DeSantis beating Trump, 51 percent to 44 percent, among self-identified evangelical voters. (Trump reclaimed the lead in a new poll released this week.) This, perhaps more than any other factor, explains the intense interest in the Florida governor among conservative leaders: Unlike Pence, Haley, Pompeo, and others, DeSantis has an obvious path to defeating Trump in the GOP primary.

    Stemberger, an outspoken Trump critic during the 2016 primary who then became an apologist during his presidency—telling fellow Christians that Trump had accomplished “unprecedentedly good things” in office—would not yet publicly commit to backing DeSantis. But he suggested that the abortion issue crystallizes an essential difference between the two men: Whereas Trump “self-destructs” by “shooting from the hip all the time,” DeSantis is disciplined, deliberate, and “highly strategic.” Part of that strategy is a speech DeSantis is scheduled to deliver next month at Liberty University.

    Tellingly, Stemberger didn’t note any difference in the personal beliefs of the two Republican front-runners. I asked him: Does faith inform DeSantis’s politics?

    “It’s interesting. I know he’s Catholic, but I’m not even sure he attends Mass regularly,” Stemberger told me. He mentioned praying over DeSantis with a group of pastors before the governor’s inauguration. “But his core is really the Constitution—the Federalist Papers, the Founding Fathers. That’s how he processes everything. He’s never going to be painted as a fundamentalist Christian … He does make references to spiritual warfare, but that’s an analogy for what he’s trying to do politically.”

    Ronald Brownstein: The contradictions of Ron DeSantis

    Indeed, over the past year, while traveling the country to raise money and rally the conservative base, the governor frequently invoked the Book of Ephesians. “Put on the full armor of God,” DeSantis would say, “and take a stand against the left’s schemes.”

    In bowdlerizing the words of the apostle Paul—substituting the left for the devil—DeSantis wasn’t merely counting on the biblical illiteracy of his listeners. He was playing to a partisan fervor that renders scriptural restraint irrelevant. Eventually, he did away with any nuance. Last fall, DeSantis released a now-famous advertisement, cinematic frames shot in black and white, that borrowed from the radio host Paul Harvey’s famous speech, “So God Made a Farmer.” Once again, an important change was made. “On the eighth day,” rumbled a deep voice, with DeSantis pictured standing tall before an American flag, “God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.”

    The video, which ran nearly two minutes, was so comically overdone—widely panned for its rampant self-glorification—that its appeal went unappreciated. Trump proved that for millions of white evangelicals who fear the loss of power, influence, and status in a rapidly secularizing nation, nothing sells like garish displays of God-ordained machismo. The humble, country-preacher appeal of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has lost its political allure. Hence the irony: DeSantis might have done the least to cultivate relationships in the evangelical movement, and the most to project himself as its next champion.

    Speaking to the students at Hillsdale, Pence took a decidedly different approach to quoting the apostle Paul.

    Having spoken broadly of the need for all Americans to return to treating one another with “civility and respect,” the former vice president made a specific appeal to his fellow Christians. No matter how pitched the battles over politics and policy, he said, followers of Jesus had a responsibility to attract outsiders with their conduct and their language. “Let your conversation be seasoned with salt,” Pence said, borrowing from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

    If he does run for president, this will be what Pence is selling to evangelicals: humility instead of hubris, decency instead of denigration. The former vice president pledged to defend traditional Judeo-Christian values—even suggesting that he would re-litigate the fight over same-sex marriage, a matter settled by courts of law and public opinion. But, Pence said, unlike certain other Republicans, he would do so with a graciousness that kept the country intact. This, he reminded the audience, had always been his calling card. As far back as his days in conservative talk radio, Pence said, he was known as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.”

    That line got some laughs. But it also underscored his limitation as a prospective candidate. After the event, while speaking with numerous guests, I heard the same thing over and over: Pence was not tough enough. They all admired him. They all thought he was an honorable man and a model Christian. But a Sunday School teacher couldn’t lead them into the battles over gender identity, school curriculum, abortion, and the like. They needed a warrior.

    Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence

    “The Bushes were nice. Mitt Romney was nice. Where did that get us?” said Jerry Byrd, a churchgoing attorney who’d driven from the Detroit suburbs to hear Pence speak. “Trump is the only one who stood up for us. The Democrats are ruining this country, and being a good Christian isn’t going to stop them. Honestly, I don’t want someone ‘on decaf.’ We need the real thing.”

    After Pence sacrificed so much of himself to stand loyally behind Trump, this is how the former president has repaid him—by conditioning Christians to expect an expression of their faith so pugilistic that Pence could not hope to pass muster.

    Byrd told me he was “done with Trump” after the ex-president’s sore-loser antics and is actively shopping for another Republican to support in 2024. He likes the former vice president. He respects the principled stand he took on January 6. But Byrd said he couldn’t imagine voting for him for president. Pence was just another one of those “nice guys” whom the Democrats would walk all over.

    Unprompted, Byrd told me that DeSantis was his top choice. I asked him why.

    “He fights,” Byrd replied.

    Tim Alberta

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  • The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence

    The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence

    Mike Pence is making little secret of his presidential ambitions. He’s written his book, he’s assembling his team, he’s mastered the art of the coy non-denial when somebody asks (in between trips to Iowa) if he’s running. In early Republican-primary polls, he hovers between 6 and 7 percent—not top-tier numbers, but respectable enough. He seems to think he has at least an outside shot at winning the Republican nomination.

    And yet, ask a Republican voter about the former vice president, and you’re likely to hear some of the most withering commentary you’ve ever encountered about a politician.

    In recent weeks, I was invited to sit in on a series of focus groups conducted over Zoom. Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the country—suburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diego—and they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pence’s target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didn’t want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pence’s roots in the religious right.

    I’ve been covering Pence’s strange Trump-era arc since 2017, when I first profiled him for The Atlantic. By some accounts, he’s wanted to be president since his college-fraternity days. I’ve always been skeptical of his chances, but now that he finally seems ready to run, I wanted to understand the appeal of his prospective candidacy. My goal was to see if I could find at least one Pence supporter.

    From the January/February 2018 issue: God’s plan for Mike Pence

    Instead, these were some of the quotes I jotted down.

    “I don’t care for him … He’s just middle-of-the-road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I wouldn’t vote for him.”

    “He has alienated every Republican and Democrat … It’s over. It’s retirement time.”

    “He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him.”

    “He just needs to go away.”

    It went on and on like that across four different focus groups. Of the 34 Republicans who participated, I only heard four people say they’d consider Pence for president—and two of them immediately started talking themselves out of it after indicating interest.

    Some of the reasons for Pence’s lack of support were intuitive. Hard-core Trump fans said they were alienated by Pence’s refusal to block the certification of the 2020 electoral votes, as the president was demanding. This break with Trump famously prompted chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” to echo through the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

    Although the sentiment expressed in the focus groups wasn’t quite so violent, the anger was still present. During one session, three people—all of whom had reported “very favorable” views of Trump—took turns trashing Pence for what they saw as his weakness.

    “I’m so mad at Pence that I would never vote for him,” said one man named Matt. “He would be a horrible president … I just don’t think he has the leadership qualities to be president.” (I agreed to quote the participants only by their first name.)

    “That’s exactly it,” a woman named Christine said, nodding eagerly. “He didn’t have the leadership qualities to do what everyone wanted him to do on January 6. He just doesn’t have that spine.”

    A third participant, Nicholas, chimed in: “He just chose to go along with all the other RINOs and Democrats, not to upset the applecart.”

    Meanwhile, less MAGA-inclined Republicans thought Pence was too Trumpy.

    “The only thing I liked about him was that he actually did stand up to Donald Trump,” a woman named Barbara said. “He’s too a part of Trump. I don’t think Trump has a chance, and I don’t think anybody in that inner circle has a chance either.”

    “I think he put a stain on himself for any normal Republican when he joined the Trump administration,” said another participant, Justin. “And then he put a stain on himself with any Trump Republican on January 6. So I don’t think he has a constituency anywhere. I don’t know if anyone would vote for him.”

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    Longwell told me this is how Pence is talked about in every focus group she holds. What to make of that 6 to 7 percent he gets in the primary polls? “I imagine there’s a cohort of GOP voters who are not particularly engaged who don’t want Trump again, and Pence is the only other name they really know,” she speculated. That, or “they’re all from Indiana,” the state where Pence served as governor. A second Republican pollster, who requested anonymity to offer his candid view, told me, “Seven percent is a weak showing for the immediate former VP.”

    Devin O’Malley, an adviser to Pence, responded to a request for comment in an email: “Mike Pence has spent the last two years traveling to more than 30 states, campaigning for dozens of candidates, and listening to potential voters. Those interactions have been incredibly positive and encouraging, and we place more value in those experiences than of a focus group conducted by disgruntled former Republicans like Sarah Longwell and paid for by some shadow organization that The Atlantic won’t disclose.” (Longwell told me the costs for the focus groups are split between The Bulwark and the Republican Accountability Project, two anti-Trump organizations with which she is affiliated.)

    What I found most fascinating about the voters’ digs at Pence was that they were almost always preceded by passing praise of his personal character: He was a “top-of-the-line guy,” a “nice man,” a “super kind, honest, decent” person. Not only did these perceived qualities fail to make him an appealing candidate, but they were also often held against him—treated as evidence that he lacked a certain presidential mettle.

    “I don’t like how Trump was just in your face with everything, but Pence is almost too far in the other direction,” one participant named Judith said.

    Perhaps these voters were identifying a simple lack of charisma. But their casual dismissal of Pence’s wholesome, God-fearing, family-man persona is emblematic of a sea change in conservative politics—and a massive miscalculation by Pence himself.

    When Pence was added to the ticket in 2016, his chief function was to vouch for Trump with mainstream Republicans, especially conservative Christian voters. Pence’s reputation as a devout evangelical gave him a certain moral credibility when he defended Trump amid scandal and outrage. He performed this task exceptionally well. Those adoring eyes, those fawning tributes, that slightly weird fixation on the breadth of his boss’s shoulders—nobody was better at playing the loyalist. And for a certain kind of voter, Pence’s loyalty provided assurance that Trump was worthy of continued support.

    Pence had his own motives, as I reported in my profile. All of this vouching for Trump was supposed to buy Pence goodwill with the base and set him up for a future presidential run. For many in Pence’s camp, the project took on a religious dimension. “If you’re Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan,” Ralph Reed, an evangelical power broker, told me back then.

    But in creating a permission structure for voters to excuse Trump’s defective character and flouting of religious values, Pence was unwittingly making himself irrelevant. In effect, he spent four years convincing conservative Christian voters that the very thing he had to offer them didn’t matter.

    In 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” By 2020, that number had risen to 68 percent.

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    Pence won the argument. Now he’s reaping the whirlwind.

    In one of the focus groups, a devout Christian named Angie was asked how much she factored in moral rectitude when assessing a presidential candidate. “I try to use my faith to choose someone by character, but it hasn’t always been possible,” she said. Sometimes she had to vote for a candidate who shared her politics but didn’t live her values.

    “Who comes to mind?” the moderator asked.

    “I think Trump falls into that category,” Angie conceded. “But quite honestly, the vast majority of others do as well.” She paused. “I would say Pence actually doesn’t fall into that category. I would say his character probably aligns with biblical values fairly well.”

    But Angie remained uninterested in seeing Pence in the Oval Office. If he had a record to run on, she wasn’t aware of it.

    “Anything he did got overshadowed by all the drama of these last four years,” she said, hastening to add, “Seems like a perfectly nice man.”

    McKay Coppins

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