President Donald Trump didn’t attend former Vice President Dick Cheney’s memorial service on Thursday. He wasn’t a no-show—he wasn’t invited.
It’s customary for sitting presidents to point out up when former presidents or vice presidents are laid to relaxation. Trump’s absence breaks that norm—although in Washington, even the villains have enemies.
Cheney, the architect of post-9/11 government enlargement and a key determine within the Iraq Conflict, died earlier this month at 84. In his last years, he grew to become one of many few Republicans prepared to defy Trump brazenly. He and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, in the end voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris as an alternative of the GOP’s nominee.
“We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” Dick Cheney mentioned on the time.
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Thursday’s service, held with full army honors, drew a bipartisan crowd. The turnout underscored an odd duality: Dick Cheney’s late-life riot towards Trump left him remoted amongst his celebration, but softened his picture for some longtime critics.
The rift was cemented in 2022, when Dick Cheney warned that nobody posed “a greater threat to our republic.” From that second, the cut up with Trump was irreparable.
At first, somebody near the household claimed Vice President JD Vance had been invited. By Thursday morning, Vance’s aides clarified to Axios that he had not—and didn’t attend. Trump adopted protocol by reducing flags to half-staff, however supplied no public assertion.
Most of Trump’s internal circle stayed away. Republican lawmakers with political ambitions adopted swimsuit, cautious to not cross a president who nonetheless sees Liz Cheney as a prime nemesis.
Democrats weren’t assured company both. Many nonetheless maintain Dick Cheney accountable for the Iraq Conflict, torture applications, mass surveillance, and a foreign-policy worldview that left numerous civilians and U.S. service members in hurt’s manner. Outdated wounds don’t heal simply because somebody turns into a Trump critic.
Former Presidents (entrance row from left) George W. Bush with Laura Bush, and Joe Biden with Jill Biden and former Vice Presidents Kamala Harris and Mike Pence with Karen Pence throughout the funeral for former Vice President Dick Cheney on the Washington Nationwide Cathedral on Nov. 20. Former Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dan Quayle are seated in second row.
Nonetheless, the room included political heavyweights. In accordance with CNN, former President Joe Biden attended on his 83rd birthday. Former President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney’s wartime companion, was anticipated to talk. Liz Cheney and several other grandchildren had been on this system
4 former vice presidents—Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle—additionally attended, together with Supreme Court docket Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan. Senior Cupboard officers from each events confirmed up, as did congressional leaders, together with Nancy Pelosi, John Thune, and Mitch McConnell.
CNN known as the visitor checklist “a nod to a time when Washington was not so polarized.” Beneficiant maybe—however it captures the political oddity of Dick Cheney’s farewell: a bipartisan tribute for a polarizing determine, minus the sitting president of his personal celebration.
Dick Cheney’s break with Trump deepened after the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He known as Trump a coward in an advert supporting his daughter’s reelection, which drew Trump’s ire.
The president responded predictably—with mockery and threats. He known as Liz Cheney “one of the dumber people in politics,” labeled Dick Cheney an “irrelevant RINO,” an acronym that means Republican In Identify Solely, and at one level urged weapons be “trained on [Liz Cheney’s] face.”
Liz Cheney in the end misplaced her 2022 major to a Trump-backed challenger. However whereas nonetheless in Congress, she served as vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, prompting Trump to recommend she ought to go to jail and even amplifying requires a televised army tribunal.
In fact, Dick Cheney’s defiance of Trump doesn’t erase a long time of controversial selections. He helped plan the Iraq Conflict, which was constructed on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, a battle that price 1000’s of American lives and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians. As vice chairman, he presided over torture applications, intelligence abuses, a botched response to Hurricane Katrina, and the early cracks of the worldwide monetary collapse. Any try and solid his legacy as straightforwardly heroic ignores the path of destruction he left behind.
But in loss of life, a few of that historical past has been softened. The White Home supplied no public remark about Trump’s absence.
And so Washington was handled to a uncommon tableau of irony: a person with a catastrophic file freezing out a president with a catastrophic file. One terrible determine refusing to host one other terrible determine, even in loss of life.
Republican infighting hardly ever reads like poetry. This second virtually does.
