Dick Cheney’s funeral being held as we speak at Washington’s Nationwide Cathedral

Former President George W. Bush, who served two phrases within the White Home alongside Cheney, will ship a tribute to him on the funeral service.

In an announcement following his dying, Bush known as Cheney a “calm and regular presence within the White Home amid nice nationwide challenges.”

“I counted on him for his trustworthy, forthright counsel, and he by no means failed to offer his greatest,” Bush mentioned. “He held to his convictions and prioritized the liberty and safety of the American individuals.”

A senior White Home official says President Trump was not invited to the funeral. Mr. Trump didn’t problem a public assertion after Cheney’s dying.

On Nov. 4, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned Mr. Trump was “conscious” of Cheney’s dying and pointed to flags flying at half-staff. Leavitt mentioned she was not conscious of any White Home involvement in his funeral plans. 

Former President Joe Biden will attend the funeral, his workplace mentioned. After Cheney’s dying, Biden issued an announcement saying, “Dick Cheney devoted his life to public service — from representing Wyoming in Congress, to serving as Secretary of Protection, and later as Vice President of the US.”

“Whereas we did not agree on a lot, he believed, as I do, that household is the start, center, and finish,” Biden mentioned. 

Former President Invoice Clinton had an unavoidable scheduling battle and won’t be able to attend the funeral, in accordance with an aide, who mentioned he’s conserving the household in his prayers.

Clinton, a former governor of Arkansas, might be in Little Rock attending an occasion commemorating the seventy fifth anniversary of the governor’s mansion with present Gov. Sarah Sanders and different former governors, together with U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee and Asa Hutchinson. 

Former vice presidents Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle might be attending the funeral service, in accordance with sources immediately aware of the plans. 

Present Vice President JD Vance was not invited, a senior White Home official mentioned.

Liz Cheney, who will communicate on the funeral, was certainly one of 10 Home Republicans who voted to question President Trump after the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and he or she helped lead the Home choose committee that investigated the assault. Mr. Trump backed a major challenger who ultimately defeated Liz Cheney. 

Dick Cheney reduce an advert for his daughter’s failed 2022 reelection marketing campaign backing her place, arguing that in U.S. historical past “there has by no means been a person that was a better menace to our republic than Donald Trump.”

In 2024 he mentioned Mr. Trump “can by no means be trusted with energy once more. As residents, we every have an obligation to place nation above partisanship to defend our Structure.” Each Liz and Dick Cheney revealed that they’d forged their ballots for the Democratic presidential nominee, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Liz Cheney additionally joined Harris on the marketing campaign path.

Cheney had set a brand new tone as a strong vice chairman, and on Sept. 11, 2001, and within the aftermath, that energy was put to the check. 

“It is arduous to clarify how necessary he was, truly, throughout these Iraq warfare days,” Republican strategist Kevin Sheridan instructed CBS Information. “He was actually central to the whole lot that America did to reply to 9/11. He is clearly acquired a whole lot of criticism since for it.”

Bush and Cheney made nationwide safety a prime precedence after the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults, and regardless of that the U.S. had launched a counterattack on al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, Cheney warned of a bigger internet of U.S. enemies, urging navy motion in opposition to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

“Merely acknowledged, there isn’t a doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney instructed the Veterans of Overseas Wars in 2002.

Baghdad fell solely three weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2003. No weapons of mass destruction had been ever discovered, and American forces started a protracted, lethal occupation.

Dick and Liz Cheney co-wrote the ebook “Distinctive: Why the World Wants a Highly effective America,” in 2015. The pair had been harshly essential of the Obama administration’s nationwide safety insurance policies, and Dick Cheney fiercely defended a number of the Bush administration’s controversial overseas insurance policies, together with use of interrogation strategies that critics condemned as torture. 

“Initially, I do not consider we sacrificed our values,” he instructed “Sunday Morning” in 2015. “I believe the No. 1 duty of senior public officers is to safeguard the nation.”

“in case you are criticism-free, then you definately’re in all probability not doing all of your job,” he continued. 

In that interview, Liz Cheny defended his report and his unyielding nature. 

“I do know of nobody who has been extra brave and devoted and honorable than my dad, by way of being prepared to say that is completely what we’ve to do, that is the suitable factor to do, typically when no person else was prepared to do it,” she mentioned. “I do know, for all of us who love you, the gratitude as People that we really feel, is matched solely by our love for him.”

Richard Bruce Cheney was born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, and grew up in Wyoming. He attended Yale however dropped out after two years and completed faculty on the College of Wyoming. 

Cheney married his high-school sweetheart Lynne, they usually had two daughters, Liz and Mary. 

He rose rapidly in politics and by age 34 turned White Home chief of workers for President Gerald Ford, the youngest particular person ever to carry the job.

In 1978, he ran for Congress in Wyoming and received the primary of six phrases within the Home. In 1989, he was chosen to be secretary of protection within the administration of President George H.W. Bush, the place he oversaw the U.S. navy victory within the 1991 Gulf Conflict.

He then spent a couple of years within the non-public sector as chairman and CEO of the oil providers big Halliburton.

In 2000, Cheney agreed to steer the seek for a operating mate for Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush — and emerged because the best choice himself, happening to serve two phrases as vice chairman.