Biden Suddenly Admires Dick Cheney After Calling Him ‘Most Dangerous’ VP In ‘History’
Joe Biden says he’s “always admired” former Vice President Dick Cheney after the 81-year-old president spent a career trashing his predecessor in the Naval Observatory.
Biden praised Cheney after ousted Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney campaigned with Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin on Thursday.
“I know her dad,” Biden told reporters upon stepping off of Air Force One. “We argue like hell but I always admired his courage and honesty.”
The sudden admiration for one of the most vilified figures among the left just 20 years ago marks a sharp turn from how Biden spoke about Dick Cheney throughout his career in politics. When Vice President Cheney was still in office, Biden called him “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history” during the 2008 debate with then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Biden went on to trash Vice President Cheney after his own election to replace him that fall. In December 2008, Biden told former Clinton fixer George Stephanopoulos that Cheney’s policy prescriptions under President George W. Bush were “not healthy for our foreign policy, not healthy for our national security, and it has not been consistent with our Constitution.”
In April of the Obama-Biden administration’s first year, then-Vice President Biden continued to swipe at his Republican predecessor.
“His power weakened America, in my view,” Biden told CNN.
“There was Cheney and his own sort of separate national security agency, and then there was the National Security Agency. There was Powell, who didn’t agree with Cheney, and Cheney off with Rumsfeld,” Biden added. “There was a divided government, a divided administration.”
CBS News called Biden and Cheney the “dueling VPs,” and they exchanged fire well into the Obama administration over federal guidelines on torture.
“Thank god the last administration didn’t listen to him in the end,” Biden said, after presented with Cheney recommending U.S. interrogators have the ability to waterboard terrorist suspects.
Biden’s sudden about-face on Dick Cheney follows the Cheney family backing Democrats in the upcoming election against former President Donald Trump. The former Republican vice president endorsed Harris in September, and his daughter, Liz, spoke at a Democrat campaign rally Thursday.
“I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat,” Liz Cheney told a crowd in Ripon, Wisconsin. “But this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Liz Cheney, however, has been campaigning for Democrats for years. In 2022, the ex-GOP House conference chair backed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for another term with the gavel just before Election Day and also campaigned against Republicans in Arizona.
Trump responded to Liz Cheney’s appearance with Harris by calling the former congresswoman a “stupid warhawk.”
“All she wants to do is shoot missiles at people,” Trump said of Cheney. “I think they hurt each other,” Trump added. “I think they’re so bad, both of them.”
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