Liz Cheney is latest Republican to endorse Harris over Trump
The former House Republican leader said Donald Trump is a ‘risk that we simply can’t take, and he has to be defeated.’
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Sept. 4, saying that former President Donald Trump “is simply a risk that, as a nation, we must never take again.”
Cheney made her endorsement during an event at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she urged her fellow conservatives “to put our country and our Constitution above partisanship” and vote for Harris in November.
“I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” Cheney said. “And, as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
Cheney, who served as the No. 3 House Republican from 2019 to 2021, had supported Trump during his first presidential bid in 2016. But after Trump helped incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, in an effort to stay in the White House despite losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Cheney voted to impeach Trump. She later sat on the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the riot, in which Trump supporters violently broke into the Capitol to try to stop the transition of power.
She is the latest Republican to endorse Harris over Trump in 2024. She and others have cited the danger Trump poses to the country if elected to a second term.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who sat on the House committee that probed the Capitol insurrection with Cheney, endorsed Harris and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to explain his reasoning.
According to a transcript published by Time magazine, Kinzinger said: “I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party, and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret: The Democrats are as patriotic as us. They love this country just as much as we do. And they are as eager to defend American values at home and abroad as we conservatives have ever been. I was relieved to discover that, because I’ve learned something about my party too, something I couldn’t ignore: The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself.”
Jim McCain, the son of the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, endorsed Harris on Sept. 3. He cited as his reason for the endorsement Trump staff’s illegal filming of footage for campaign advertising at Arlington National Cemetery and their altercation with cemetery staff when they were told campaigning wasn’t allowed on cemetery grounds. McCain said he was changing his registration to the Democratic Party.
“I care about my family. I care about equal rights of everyone in this country. I care about all this,” Jim McCain said in an interview with CNN. “As much as I stayed as an independent, I decided that, you know, it was time to move on and do what I believe in.”
On Aug. 27, a group of more than 200 Republicans who had worked for former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as for former GOP presidential nominees McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), wrote a letter saying they, too, are voting for Harris in November.
“At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions,” the former staffers wrote. “Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte J.D. Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies. We can’t let that happen.”
