Liz Cheney: "Stand With the Truth"

Country over party.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. - George Orwell, 1984

Liz Cheney speaks at Ripon College, October 3, 2024

The symbolism was stark and dramatic. In their first joint campaign appearance, Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris chose to come to Ripon, Wisconsin, the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 — in the midst of a defining and wrenching moral crisis in American politics.

Happy Friday. There are 31 days until Election Day.

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“Stand with the Truth”

It really was an extraordinary moment: Two women from very different political traditions reaching across a vast ideological divide to meet the moment. As Politico notes, “The pairing once would have been unthinkable.”

The California liberal and Wyoming conservative agree on little besides their view that former President Donald Trump is a threat to democracy who shouldn’t return to the White House after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The theme of Thursday’s event was “Country over Party” — and I was there for it. So were other Republicans and ex-Republicans:

Two dozen Wisconsin Republicans, including former lawmakers, other former elected officials and a GOP sitting district attorney, have signed an open letter declaring their support for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in her campaign for president and condemning the Republican nominee former President Donald Trump.

The Harris campaign released the letter early Thursday, describing it as the product of months of outreach by the campaign and by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to Republicans.

The choice of Ripon reminds us that history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

In 1854, a group of Americans, animated by their opposition to slavery, came together here to form a new political party. They recognized that the partisan alignments of the past were simply unequal to the crisis the nation faced.

And that’s where the rhyme comes in, because we face our own moment of choosing.

I had a chance to speak with Harris and Cheney before the event and they were both keenly aware of the symbolic significance and the weight of the historical parallel — and the need to rethink the partisan divide.

So don’t take what’s happening for granted.

It’s not easy to put aside deeply held political beliefs and partisan loyalties, but Harris is (rather remarkably) working to create a big tent. Her campaign is not relitigating things that happened in the past.

When they took to the stage together, Harris and Cheney embraced that message. Cheney made it clear that she was still a conservative, but that this year’s election was not about left vs. right, or even D versus R. Instead, it is a fundamental decision about whether or not we're going to put country over party. 

“Our republic faces a threat unlike any we have faced before,” Cheney declared. “A former president who attempted to stay in power by unraveling the foundations of our republic, by refusing to accept the lawful results confirmed by dozens of courts of the 2020 election.”

She told the crowd in Ripon:

We cannot turn away from this truth in this election. Putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty. At the very heart of our survival as a Republic is the peaceful transition of power.

[O]ur institutions don't defend themselves. We, the people, must do that. We, the people, defend our institutions. And our institutions held on January 6th because there were brave men and women including elected officials at every level of our government who did their duty, who stood up for what was right, who resisted Donald Trump's efforts to pressure them to violate their oaths….

In this election, a broad coalition has come together to support Vice President Kamala Harris. Now, we may disagree on some things, but we are bound together by the one thing that matters to us as Americans more than any other, and that's our duty to our Constitution and our belief in the miracle and the blessing of this incredible nation…

So today, I ask all of you here, and everyone listening across this great country, to join us.

I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.

In turn, Harris graciously acknowledged Cheney’s support:

"Liz Cheney stands in the finest tradition of [the Republican party's] leaders," said Harris. "And if people across Wisconsin and our nation are willing to do what Liz is doing, to stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals ... then together, I know we can chart a new way forward, not as members of any one party, but as Americans."

Talk about timing.

Harris and Cheney took the stage the day after the release of Jack Smith’s brief on Trump’s conspiracy to subvert and overturn the presidential election through fraud, deceit, and violence. (I’ll have a lot more to say about this over the weekend, so check your inboxes.)

On Thursday, JD Vance doubled down on the Big Lie, by saying that Trump had actually won the 2020 election. (So much for the evanescent “New Vance” thing.)

Trump’s running mate, who has propped up the GOP presidential nominee’s election conspiracy theories in the past, continued to do so when Jason Selvig of The Good Liars, a political comedy duo, asked him if he believes Trump’s repeatedly disproven claims that President Joe Biden stole the election from him.

“Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?” Selvig asked Vance.

“Yes,” Vance replied. When Selvig repeated the question, Vance gave an affirmative “yep.”

Selvig then asked Vance whether he’ll concede if Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ nominee for president, gets more votes than the Trump campaign. Vance refused to answer. 

Also on Thursday, Trump ramped up his lies. Via the NYT: “Trump Rally in Michigan Dominated by More False Statements.”

Actually, it was a cataract of bullshit.

In the roughly 85 minutes that Mr. Trump was onstage, he repeated a pattern of untrue assertions [i.e. “lies] that have characterized many of his events as the 2024 presidential race heads into its final weeks.

He lied about the election — once again claiming that he won — and about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

Mr. Trump reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election and made no acknowledgment of new evidence that was unsealed against him on Wednesday in the federal election subversion case….

Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the state of funding at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that the Biden administration had stolen disaster-relief money allocated to the agency to give to housing for undocumented immigrants so they would vote for Democrats.

Meanwhile…

Don’t miss these two stories that got swamped in the news cycle:

First, this report about Trump’s petty and politicized handling of previous disasters: “Trump initially refused to give California wildfire aid because it's a blue state, ex-aide says.”

[A] review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.

The story includes this dazzling detail:

Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.

But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” said Harvey,

**

Then there was this. Trump doubles/triples down on the lies about the Haitians and the brutality of his deportation plan:

Nota bene: He is now talking about deporting legal immigrants.

The Friday dogs

Flashback: I’m buried under there, somewhere.

Auggie and I went for a walk in the woods. Eli headed back to the house.

Finally