Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (L) holds a moderated conversation with Former US Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, at People’s Light performing arts theater Malvern, Pennsylvania, on October 21, 2024.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney participated in a series of moderated conversations on Monday across the “Blue Wall” battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
“It’s not about party, it’s about right and wrong,” Cheney said in Birmingham, Michigan. “I would just remind people, if you are at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody. And there will be millions of Republicans who do that on Nov. 5.”
“Every single thing in my experience and in my background has played a part in my decision to endorse Vice President Harris, and that begins with the fact that I’m a conservative,” Cheney said Monday morning in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
“I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the Constitution. And you have to choose in this race, between someone who has been faithful to the Constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump.”
Cheney, who called herself “pro-life,” said that nonetheless, draconian restrictions on women’s access to reproductive healthcare, currently in force in several states, are “not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change.”
Since the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections, conservative legislators have passed highly restrictive laws in more than two dozen states that limit women’s legal rights to end a pregnancy.
The Harris campaign is courting disaffected Republicans, who may be on the fence about voting for Trump. The campaign kicked off a “Republicans for Harris” group in August and has since amplified the voices of a small, but growing, number of prominent Republicans who have come out in support of the Democratic vice president.
Harris on Monday reiterated her commitment to have a Republican in her cabinet if she becomes President, and said she knows it’s in the nation’s “best interest” to invite “good ideas from wherever they come.”
“We need a healthy two-party system, we need to be able to have these good, intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” Harris said in Malvern, PA as the room broke out in applause.
Cheney is becoming a key asset to Harris in the 11th hour sprint to Election Day, helping to create what political strategists call a “permission structure” for Republicans who might be reluctant to cross party lines to vote for Harris.
According to Cheney, patriotic Republicans have “a duty and obligation to do what we know is right for the country.”
Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris holds a town hall with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), in The People’s Light in Malvern, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 21, 2024.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Cheney endorsed Harris in September and first took the stage with the vice president earlier this month in Ripon, Wisconsin, a town known as the birthplace of the Republican Party.
Cheney also took aim at Trump’s isolationist foreign policy, calling it “not Republican” and “dangerous.”
“Without allies, America will find our very freedom and security challenged and threatened, and one final point on this, don’t think that Congress can stop him,” Cheney said in Birmingham. “All he has to do is say ‘I won’t fulfill our NATO treaty obligations,’ and NATO begins to unravel.”
Trump has long voiced distrust and disdain for the U.S. and Europe’s cornerstone military alliance for the past 75 years. This fall, NATO members are reportedly “Trump-proofing” their military and aid commitments in preparation for the possibility that he is elected president in November.
Cheney has long been vocal in her criticism of Trump’s foreign policy, particularly of the former President’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria and to cut the number of troops in Afghanistan, which she called “disastrous” in a CBS interview in 2018.
At an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month, Cheney cited Harris’ foreign policy, including her strong support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, as an area where she agrees with the Democratic presidential hopeful.
Trump, in a Truth Social post from Monday morning, criticized Cheney as a “war hawk” whom he accused of wanting “to go to war with every Muslim country known to mankind,” claiming without evidence that Arab American voters, a community that could be critical for Harris in Michigan, were “upset” that Harris was campaigning with Cheney.
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris holds a moderated conversation with Former US Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, at People’s Light performing arts theater Malvern, Pennsylvania, on October 21, 2024.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images
