Republican Liz Cheney joins Harris campaign

The Democrat presidential nominee campaigns with the former Republican congresswoman at the GOP’s birthplace.

Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney arrive at Ripon College in Wisconsin on Thursday. Picture: AFP

US Vice-President Kamala Harris rallied with Republican Liz Cheney in the birthplace of the modern Republican Party on Thursday as the pair delivered a double-barrelled denunciation of GOP nominee Donald Trump as a dire threat to democracy.

With some people hoisting “Country over Party” signs, Ms Harris told the crowd “people of every party must stand together” to reject Mr Trump, citing his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his failure to quell the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

It was an improbable moment – a Democrat nominee giving a nod to a rival party member and to the origins of the opposing party in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign – and it demonstrated how much Ms Harris is attempting to win over moderate and crossover Republican voters.

Ms Harris said of Mr Trump, “He refused to accept the will of the people and to accept the results of an election that was free and fair.”

“The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or party partisanship or self-interest. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised.”

Ms Cheney is one of Mr Trump’s most ardent antagonists. She is the daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney and was the top GOP member on the House committee that investigated the Capitol riots, earning Mr Trump’s disdain and effectively exiling herself from her own party.

“Violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do,” Ms Cheney told the crowd as she recounted Mr Trump refusing to act as he watched the violent attack on television. Someone in the crowd yelled “coward!”; others booed.

Adding to the surreal nature of the event, the crowd cheered references to Dick Cheney and to another Republican former vice- president, Mike Pence, who refused to bow to pressure from Mr Trump and attempt to stop the certification in congress of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

“He praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That’s who Donald Trump is,” Ms Cheney said, while urging the crowd to “meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth. To reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump”.

In an interview with Fox News, on Thursday night Mr Trump said of Ms Harris and Ms Cheney: “I think they hurt each other. I think they’re so bad, both of them.”

Ms Cheney lost her Wyoming seat to a Trump-endorsed candidate two years ago. She endorsed Ms Harris last month. The two women appeared together in Ripon, home to a white schoolhouse where a series of meetings held in 1854 to oppose slavery’s expansion led to the start of the Republican Party.

“I know she loves our country, and I know she will be a president for all Americans,” Ms Cheney said of Ms Harris. Noting that she herself remains conservative, Ms Cheney said she was “honoured to join her in this urgent cause”.

Ms Harris is on a two-day Wisconsin-Michigan swing, and Mr Trump was in Michigan on Thursday, as both candidates grapple for wins in the “blue wall” battleground states, which also include Pennsylvania. While Ms Cheney and Ms Harris spoke, the former president took to his social media site, Truth Social, to say Democrats and prosecutors have lied about the “huge crowd of Patriots gathered in Washington, D.C. on January 6th”.

That was a far cry from Mr Biden’s reaction. Back at the White House after touring damage from Hurricane Helene in Georgia and Florida, he said of Ms Cheney: “She made one of the most consequential speeches I’ve ever heard. She has character.”

“I know her dad,” he added. “We argue like hell, but I always admired his courage and honesty. What she did took not only political courage, but physical courage.”

Ms Harris’s visit to Wisconsin came a day after a federal judge unsealed a 165-page court filing outlining prosecutors’ case against Mr Trump for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and obstruction.

AP