WASHINGTON: Former Vice President Dick Cheney excoriated Donald Trump in a new campaign video for his daughter Rep. Liz Cheney, calling the former president a “coward” and saying there has never been anyone who is a “greater threat to our republic.”
The video was released Thursday by Rep. Cheney’s reelection campaign, two weeks before a Republican primary election in Wyoming that the three-term congresswoman is bracing to lose. Echoing the criticism his daughter has made of Trump, Dick Cheney denounced him as a danger to the country through his relentless lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.
“He is a coward,” Dick Cheney said. “A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the video.
Trump has made defeating Liz Cheney a top goal since she joined nine other House Republicans in voting to impeach him for inciting the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, at the US Capitol. She further infuriated him by becoming vice chair of the House committee investigating the riot.
Trump has endorsed lawyer Harriet Hageman in Cheney’s primary. As the congresswoman has focused her energy on digging in to Trump’s role surrounding the Jan. 6 violence, Hageman has barnstormed the state, courting small, rural crowds in the traditional mold of Wyoming politicking, an approach more like the one Cheney herself used to top a crowded Republican primary field to win the state’s lone House seat in 2016.
Dick Cheney, who served eight years as President George W. Bush’s vice president, has made no secret of his disdain for Trump and the members of his own party who, particularly in the wake of the Capitol riot, shied away from efforts to remove Trump from office.
In January, Dick Cheney and his daughter were the only two Republicans to attend a pro forma session of the House on the anniversary of riot at the Capitol, sitting together in the front row on the Republican side of the chamber.
“Well, it’s not a leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years,” Dick Cheney said after that gathering, noting the absence of other Republicans in the chamber of which he was a member in the 1980s.
Liz Cheney has faced other fallout from her vote to impeach Trump and join the Jan. 6 House committee. Several months after the impeachment vote, the House GOP dumped her from the No. 3 leadership post for her persistent repudiation of Trump’s election claims. Federal and state election officials and Trump’s attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted.
Asked if he was disappointed by the move, Dick Cheney replied: “My daughter can take care of herself.”
In the new video, the former vice president lauds his daughter for “standing up for the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the constitution, when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”
“There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure that Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office, and she will succeed,” Cheney said. “I proudly voted for my daughter. I hope you will, too.”
Dick Cheney calls Trump a ‘coward’ in ad for daughter Liz
https://arab.news/y965z
Dick Cheney calls Trump a ‘coward’ in ad for daughter Liz
- Trump has made defeating Liz Cheney a top goal since she joined nine other House Republicans in voting to impeach him for inciting the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, at the US Capitol
- “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said
Trump urges Iranian Kurds to attack Iran as war widens
- Azerbaijan preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday
- The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel on Friday said it had started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country’s military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
Azerbaijan prepares to retaliate
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbor.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border between the countries in a message posted on its Telegram channel in Hebrew early on Friday.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
Us munitions full
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing about operations that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The Pentagon earlier this week said the military campaign, known as Operation Epic Fury, is focused on destroying Iran’s offensive missiles, missile production and navy, while not allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier.
He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran’s missile production facilities.
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90 percent since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83 percent in that time frame, he said. In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
