Dick Cheney's Ruinous Legacy

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Dick Cheney’s Ruinous Legacy"

History As It Happens – November 7, 2025
Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Jeremy Suri, Professor of History and Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

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Episode Overview

This episode of History As It Happens dives deep into the political legacy of Dick Cheney, focusing on his influence over American executive power, foreign policy, and the unintended consequences that helped pave the way for Donald Trump’s presidency. Through a conversation with historian Jeremy Suri, host Martin Di Caro scrutinizes Cheney’s transformation of the vice presidency, his role in the Iraq War, advocacy for the “unitary executive,” and ongoing impacts on U.S. democracy and global leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Cheney’s Early Political Career

• Origins in the Republican Party: Entered politics during the Ford administration and rose through the ranks.
  • “His political career starts in the late 1960s... He goes to Washington on a fellowship ... and then he never left Washington.” – Jeremy Suri [13:04]
  • Saw the Republican party transform from the Ford era into the Reagan era.
• Conservative Credentials:
  • Wyoming background influenced his small-government, low-tax views.
  • Consistent support for Reagan-era policies: “He was a believer in small government...low taxation...strong national defense...” – Suri [14:32]
  • Voting record reflected mainstream 1980s conservatism but no major legislative achievements.
• Rise to Power: Recognized as a shrewd negotiator and party leader, despite lacking a large constituency: “He was the lone member of Congress from Wyoming...to get reelected in Wyoming...this is a state of what, 500,000 people.” – Di Caro/Suri [16:39–17:10]

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Reinventing the Vice Presidency Under George W. Bush

• Unprecedented Influence: Cheney transformed the Vice Presidency into a central policy role.
  • “He made the Vice President more of a day to day policy player...often...the last person the President talked to before he made a decision.” – Suri [17:59]
  • Acted as policy gatekeeper, especially on national security.
  • Compared to Henry Kissinger in his behind-the-scenes influence [18:57].
• Comparison Across Administrations: Less influential as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, but pivotal in George W.'s presidency.

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Architect of Expanding Executive Power (Unitary Executive)

• Roots in Watergate and Iran-Contra:
  • Early disillusionment with Congressional oversight: “Part of it grew out of a long-standing frustration...of working for presidents who were constrained by Congress, constrained by bureaucracy, constrained by public opinion.” – Suri [23:53]
  • Cheney believed in restoring and expanding executive authority, especially after what he saw as post-Watergate and Vietnam-era overcorrections.
  • The Iran-Contra scandal solidified Cheney’s view that the presidency should have near-exclusive national security authority [13:13, 39:12, 40:38].
• War on Terror as a Crucible:
  • Used 9/11 as a justification to implement his unitary executive philosophy: “No one since the end of the Cold War does more to expand presidential power before Trump than Dick Cheney.” – Suri [25:13]
• Direct Impact on Trump: Cheney’s expansion of presidential power laid the groundwork for Trump’s more authoritarian use of the executive [25:13, 41:58].

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The Iraq War & Misleading the Public

• Decision Making and Rhetoric:
  • Cheney publicly and forcefully asserted—contrary to intelligence doubts—that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction [06:12].
    • “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” – Cheney [06:12]
  • Promoted the myth of an Iraq–al Qaeda connection and claimed U.S. troops would be “welcomed as liberators,” a statement that became infamous [07:32, 29:35].
• Retrospective Contradictions: Contrasted warnings from earlier in his career (1994), where Cheney described a post-Saddam Iraq as a “quagmire” [07:58].
• Enabling Torture & Rendition:
  • Key driver behind U.S. torture policy and extraordinary rendition.
    • “He urged the President...to permit the rendition and torturous interrogation of enemy captives in CIA prisons abroad.” – Di Caro, quoting Melvin Leffler [22:22]
    • “You have said that you do not believe that waterboarding, for example, was torture.” – CBS Face the Nation [09:05]
• “Missionary” Lying vs. Reckless Authority:
  • Suri: Cheney believed so deeply in Saddam's threat that he saw misleading the public as justified by a "larger truth" [28:31].
  • “They believed...it was okay to cut corners...because the larger truth was what was important for them. And that’s the kind of lying that it was.” – Suri [28:31]

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Lasting Domestic and Global Consequences

• Enduring Policy Structures:
  • Surveillance, Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), and executive prerogatives remain largely untouched, even by subsequent Democratic administrations [34:43].
• Iraq’s Ongoing Struggles:
  • U.S. invasion failed to establish a stable, democratic Iraq; persistent corruption, Iranian influence, and violence remain [35:44].
  • “Iraq was not transformed, and I think till the day he died, Cheney still believed that he did the right thing there, that it worked.” – Di Caro [35:50]
• Absence of Accountability:
  • Despite reputational damage for Bush and Cheney, there has been little true accountability for the war and its aftermath [32:01–33:29].
  • “There are still people at Guantanamo as we speak...kinds of surveillance...being used that come out of the Patriot act and the AUMF.” – Suri [33:30]

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Cheney’s Legacy: From Ruinous War to the Road to Trump

• An Enabler of Trump’s Authoritarianism:
  • Suri: “Cheney created an environment that made it easier for Trump to argue for an authoritarian president...enabled the authoritarian impulses of Donald Trump.” [42:38]
• Contrast with Trump:
  • Cheney was “a deep believer in expertise and knowledge,” as opposed to Trump’s “reckless” leadership and disregard for expertise [42:38].
• The Collapse of GOP Norms:
  • Cheney and Liz Cheney ostracized from their party over anti-Trump stances [50:13–50:55].
  • “It would have been crazy to think Dick Cheney would ever vote for a Democrat for president.” – Di Caro [49:19]
  • “It reveals…how radical Trump is or how not conservative he is...He did not believe in creating cults of personality.” – Suri [49:19]
• Cravenness for Power Among Republicans:
  • Rising tolerance for anti-democratic behavior to maintain power, marked by Liz Cheney’s ouster [50:19–51:42].
  • “That’s putting yourself before the nation at a key moment...Republicans will live in ignominy for that.” – Suri [50:55]
• Connection to Ongoing Institutional Crisis:
  • “They had lied about weapons of mass destruction...That empowered Trump’s anti-elitism more than anything else.” – Suri [45:44]
  • Erosion of trust in American institutions, rise of populism, and intensifying executive authority traced to the choices and rhetoric forged in Cheney’s tenure.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Cheney's Power and the Unitary Executive:
  • “No one since the end of the Cold War does more to expand presidential power before Trump than Dick Cheney.” – Jeremy Suri [25:13]
• On Executing the Iraq War:
  • “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...They will welcome as liberators the United States.” – Dick Cheney [06:12, 07:32]
• Cheney on the Dangers of Invading Iraq (1994):
  • “Once you got to Iraq and took it over...then what are you going to put in its place?...It’s a quagmire.” – Dick Cheney [07:58]
• On Post-9/11 Mentality:
  • “He was traumatized by that. And it led him to dig deeper into his frustrations with limits on executive authority...” – Suri [23:53]
• Lies and Larger Truths:
  • “They believed...it was okay to cut corners and even say some things that were not quite true because the larger truth was what was important for them.” – Jeremy Suri [28:31]
• On Accountability and Legacy:
  • “So in some ways, Cheney’s actions produced Barack Obama.” – Jeremy Suri [33:34]
  • “The continued misuse of power is actually what is most striking to me.” – Suri [33:30]
• On Cheney and Trump:
  • “Cheney saw Trump as destroying all of that for corrupt, narcissistic, egotistical purposes. And January 6th was the sort of center of that...” – Suri [49:19]

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Key Timestamps

• Origins of Cheney’s Political Philosophy: [13:04–15:19]
• Rise in the Reagan Era: [15:12–16:39]
• Transformation of Vice Presidency: [17:59–18:57]
• Cheney’s Role in the Bush Administration: [20:29–22:22]
• Promotion of Torture, Rendition, and War: [22:22–23:53], [06:12–07:32], [28:31]
• Unitary Executive and Iran Contra Lessons: [13:13], [39:12], [40:38]
• Foundations for Trump’s Authoritarianism: [25:13], [42:38]
• GOP and Institutional Consequences: [50:13–51:42]
• Lasting Consequences of Iraq War: [35:44–36:00]
• Split in Conservative Movement: [43:56–45:44]

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Flow & Tone

The discussion is direct, historically rigorous, and unsparing in its critique, yet careful to contextualize Cheney as a product of his times and ideologies. Suri, as a historian, provides analytical distance while Di Caro interrogates legacy and accountability in candid, sometimes passionate terms. The overall tone is reflective, critical, and urgent about the stakes for American democracy.

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Summary

This episode positions Dick Cheney as a defining architect of modern American executive power and foreign interventionism. By reshaping the vice presidency, driving the U.S. into Iraq under false pretenses, and institutionalizing practices like torture, Cheney left a controversial, deeply influential legacy. His belief in maximal presidential power and frequent willingness to bypass norms or even mislead the public, the show argues, directly enabled the emergence of a more authoritarian executive branch—culminating in the Trump presidency. Despite late-career condemnation of Trump and the January 6 attack, Cheney’s legacy persists in expanded presidential authority and fractured institutional trust, with ongoing consequences for both America and the world.

Transcript

[Dick Cheney]

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[Martin DeCaro]

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[Martin DeCaro]

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[Dick Cheney]

Hope this is the last time it'll be necessary to take the time of the House to discuss the subject of the Iran Contra Committee. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? I realized that the person who was best qualified to be my vice presidential nominee was working by my side. I look forward to working with you, Governor, to change the tone in Washington to restore a spirit of civility and respect and cooperation.

[Martin DeCaro]

There has been a plane crash on.

[Dick Cheney]

The southern tip of Manhattan. There is one report, as of yet.

[Jeremy Suri]

Unconfirmed, that a plane has hit the.

[Dick Cheney]

World Trade center, has crashed into the World Trade Center. Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question about what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

Richard B. Cheney was a White House chief of staff, Congressman, Secretary of Defense and oil executive before he became Vice President of the United States. That is where he left a lasting mark on questions of war and peace, executive authority and public trust in American institutions. His legacy is a disgrace because of his lies, the death and destruction caused by a preemptive war he pushed for, and his unintended role in making a Trump presidency possible a generation later. That's next as we report History as it happens.

[Jeremy Suri]

I'm Martin DeCaro and double down not just on a Unitary executive. I think Cheney for a while believed in a unitary, unbounded, we might even say authoritarian executive. And that is why not only is his legacy, as you call it, ruinous, in some ways, it is the essential foundation for Trump, although they differ later on. No one since the end of the Cold War does more to expand presidential power before Trump than Dick Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the governor and Mrs. Bush and Secretary and Mrs. Cheney.

[Martin DeCaro]

July 25, 2000. It is days before the Republican National Convention Convention in Philadelphia, about three months before the contested presidential election and the Florida recount saga, and a little more than a year before Al Qaeda suicide pilots flew commercial airliners into the twin towers and Pentagon.

[Dick Cheney]

I believe you're looking at the next Vice President of The United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

July 25, 2000. Texas Governor George W. Bush announces his running mate for the Republican ticket, Dick Cheney.

[Dick Cheney]

Three months ago, when Governor Bush asked me to head up his search team, I honestly did not expect that I would be standing here today.

[Martin DeCaro]

No one watching that day imagined what was coming a global war on terrorism. Or probably gave much thought to Cheney's ideas about executive authority that drew on the lessons he took away from Watergate and then from the Iran Contra scandal in the mid-1980s when he was a Wyoming congressman.

[Dick Cheney]

I hope this is the last time it'll be necessary to take the time of the House to discuss the subject of the Iran Contra Committee.

[Martin DeCaro]

Let me as Malcolm Byrne writes in his 2014 book, Iran Contra Reagan's Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power, Cheney subscribed to the notion of the unitary executive. His experience with Iran Contra and attempts by Congress to assert meaningful oversight over Reagan administration conduct contributed to his later thinking about presidential authority. In 2005, he pointed reporters to the Select Committee's minority report from the 1980s as a roadmap to the subject. In effect following that blueprint, senior officials boosted executive power in a variety of controversial ways, rationalizing enhanced interrogation of terrorism suspects, approving warrantless wiretaps on US Citizens, justifying deceptive administration pronouncements in the lead up to the US War on Iraq, and engaging in a broad pattern of secrecy in matters ranging from counterterrorism to economics. Malcolm Byrne, writing in 2014. So it is impossible to know how Vice President Cheney may have influenced history had 911 never happened. But it did happen, and it provided this master political operator a chance to push his ideas about presidential power in the crucible of a national tragedy, in and in an atmosphere of fear and desire for vengeance.

[Dick Cheney]

Now Americans must Fight again in this new century, war has come to us. The terrorists who attacked this country have declared themselves the mortal enemies of the United States and would be dealt with as such.

[Martin DeCaro]

Richard B. Cheney died on November 3rd. He was 84. He entered politics in the 1970s, but will be remembered most for the influence he exerted to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2003. Cheney worked behind the scenes to prime the gears of war, and in public, he made false claims to get the American people on board. Here he is in August 2002, speaking to a veterans group about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

[Dick Cheney]

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors, confrontations that will involve both the weapons that he has today and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.

[Martin DeCaro]

But there was plenty of doubt inside the Bush administration about Saddam's arsenal, or I should say non existent arsenal. Cheney also played up an Al Qaeda Iraq nexus that did not exist. And on NBC's Meet the Press, he insisted US invaders would be welcomed. Said Cheney, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq. From the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will in fact be greeted as liberators. The moderator, Tim Russert, replied, if your analysis is not correct and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties? Cheney said, well, I think it's unlikely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we'll be greeted as liberators.

[Dick Cheney]

The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question about what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

Now, let's flashback for a moment to 1994. Cheney is out of power, and he's being interviewed about the decision in 1991 during the first Gulf War not to go all the way to Baghdad and unseat Saddam Hussein. He was Secretary of Defense during the George H.W. bush administration because if we'd gone to.

[Dick Cheney]

Baghdad, we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It would have been a US Occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim fought over for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire.

[Martin DeCaro]

Vice President Cheney should have listened to Secretary of Defense Cheney's advice after the 2003 invasion. As Iraq sank into the abyss, Cheney stuck to his narrative. He was also an integral figure in developing the Bush administration's torture program, which he never apologized for. On the contrary, he continued to insist it really wasn't torture. Here he is on CBS's Face the Nation in 2009 after Obama's election.

[Jeremy Suri]

Let me talk to you a little bit about torture.

[Dick Cheney]

You have said that you do not believe that waterboarding, for example, was torture. You and members of the Cabinet sat.

[Jeremy Suri]

In the White House and approved the.

[Dick Cheney]

Methods of interrogation that were used by the CIA. Why would something like that reach your.

[Jeremy Suri]

Level, Mr. Vice President?

[Dick Cheney]

Well, because the CIA did not want to proceed without having a very clear understanding of what was authorized and what was appropriate. And they'd seen situations, I'd seen situations before where the CIA would get out and undertake an assignment or a mission and then find that the politicians would all run for the hills. Iran Contra.

[Martin DeCaro]

In my view, all this makes Dick Cheney a war criminal, but he became something of an ally to the anti Trump resistance by voting for Kamala Harris last year after condemning Donald Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election.

[Dick Cheney]

There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Repub than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election, using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.

[Martin DeCaro]

As some historians and political commentators contend, Cheney helped pave the road to Trump with his disregard for Congress, the Constitution and the law. Historian Jeremy Surry is an expert on US Foreign policy at the LBJ School of Public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the Impossible the Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office. You can also read his work every day on Substack at Democracy of Hope newsletter or listen to his podcast this Is Democracy Our Conversation next. But remember, if you want to skip ads, get bonus content and access the Entire catalog of 500 episodes, tap subscribe now in the Show Notes or go to historyasithappens.supercast.com Every holiday, I look for gifts that feel thoughtful and taste unforgettable, and Omaha Steaks never disappoints. From tender, juicy filet mignons to cozy comfort meals and gourmet sides, they make holiday entertaining effortless. I've given Omaha Steaks as a gift before, and the reaction is always pure excitement. The flavor, quality and presentation are unmatched. Every cut is perfectly aged, hand trimmed by master butchers and guaranteed to impress. Whether you're hosting, gifting or treating yourself, Omaha Steaks brings five generations of uncompromising quality to every celebration. Save big on gourmet gifts and more holiday favorites with Omaha steaks. Visit Omaha steaks.com for 50% off site wide during their Sizzle all the Way sale and for an extra $35 off use promo code Flavor at checkout. Terms apply. See site for details. That's Omaha Steaks.com code flavor AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI [e-mail] that's R U B R-I K.com Jeremy Suri welcome back.

[Jeremy Suri]

Always good to be with you, Martin.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, whenever somebody who's been in politics was a major political figure, a force in American politics for decades, whenever somebody like that dies, it gives us an opportunity not just reflect on that person's career and their impact, but the eras, plural they live through. Dick Cheney, he saw the Republican Party go through multiple phases or eras, if you will. Did he not? Why don't we start there? This man entered Congress in 1979, but he had already been part of the Gerald Ford administration a much different Republican Party.

[Jeremy Suri]

That's absolutely right. And in some ways, you know, his political career starts in the late 1960s when he's at the University of Wisconsin, Madison during some of the biggest and most important student protests against the Vietnam War. And then he goes to Washington on a fellowship. He was actually sponsored by a Wisconsin senator. He did not finish his PhD degree at Wisconsin. He left to go for this White House fellowship. And then he never left Washington in A. A sense. And that's how he got involved with the Ford administration, eventually becoming chief of staff when Don Rumsfeld, who was the chief of staff, became Secretary of defense. And Cheney then had a career in Congress, became a leader of the Republican Party in Congress just in that period. Before he entered the George H.W. bush administration, he had seen the party go from debates about the Vietnam War and all the dark and difficult issues around Nixon's presidency, which I know you've covered in other episodes. He saw that a party that was really torn apart, a part that was searching for identity, come to what was an interregnum with Ford and then a new revitalized party with Ronald Reagan. And I think that's what really launched him, not just from the White House into more prominence, but really made him the dominant political figure in some ways that he was for a decade, from the late 80s to the late 90s, by design.

[Martin DeCaro]

Cheney was always difficult to figure out. He didn't do a lot of news conferences. He didn't talk about himself a lot. But he was a conservative.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yes, I think so. But I think it's important to state that in some ways, he was a very traditional conservative. He was a believer in small government. This was his Wyoming roots. Even though Wyoming benefits from a lot of big government, there's the perception of a kind of frontier where people are left to their own devices, where freedom is not about big government, but instead about people being given the resources and the opportunities to make their own way. He was also a believer in low taxation, and he was a believer in strong national defense and a very prominent American international role in the world. This is bread and butter. Eisenhower. Conservatism, in some ways, low spending at home, strong defense abroad.

[Martin DeCaro]

Also known as a neo conservative, maybe later on. What is with that label? You think it fits Cheney?

[Jeremy Suri]

I do. I think he became a neoconservative, just as many other former Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford conservatives became neoconservatives in the late 1970s. Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, all of those around Cheney and the George W. Bush administration, they get their teeth cut in the late 70s. They are angry and concerned that the United States appears to be losing its dominance in the world, that the Soviet Union has reached parity and in some ways, advantages over the United States. They see the United States as too weak under Jimmy Carter. They believe we're too shy about using our power overseas, that human rights is softening us. And they also believe that at home we have mismanaged our resources and that we need a stronger executive to execute a stronger foreign policy and also to cut a lot of the waste and pork that they see undermining our position at home.

[Martin DeCaro]

The New York Times obituary. In a decade on Capitol hill beginning in 1979, he voted a solid conservative line, was reelected five times by voters who liked his folksy ways and his record. He voted for prayer in public schools, restrictions on abortions, and virtually all of President Reagan's agenda. Cheney voted against gun control, AIDS research, organized labor, welfare programs, busing for school desegregation and spending for education. Yeah, very much a Reagan Republican, I.

[Jeremy Suri]

Was just gonna say. Absolutely true. The one thing I would say that the New York Times obituary didn't include, which I think is a worthwhile contextual point, is he was the lone member of Congress from Wyoming, just as his daughter Liz Cheney would be. That means he actually represented very few people. So to get reelected in Wyoming, I'm not naysaying that is an important thing. This is a state of what, 500,000.

[Martin DeCaro]

People, has more senators than Congress members.

[Jeremy Suri]

Right. I mean, most of us have congressional representatives who represent larger districts than Cheney. So the point being that he was elected by a very small number of people.

[Martin DeCaro]

And as the obituary says, but to many colleagues, he was more than his voting record. He was known as a skilled negotiator, able to work with both parties. And as you alluded to, because Democrats controlled the House, many of his votes were cast in losing causes. He was not responsible for any major legislation, but he was seen as a leader. So we can't cover, and I don't want to cover every aspect of this man's very long career. I want to focus in on a couple of things with you. I do believe this man had a ruinous legacy, despite his recent popularity among some because he voted against Trump. We'll start with his time as Vice President under George W. Bush. It has been said that he reinvented the Vice presidency, made it more powerful, even though the Constitution gives that office no actual power. What is your view on that?

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, it's definitely true that he made the Vice President more of a day to day policy player. His predecessors, particularly Vice President George H.W. bush, who he then served with, they played a role, they mattered, but they mostly mattered on the margins. Right. George H.W. bush's vice president really didn't influence Reagan's day to day policymaking. He went and traveled for him. He was the first to meet Gorbachev in 1985 when there was a change in leadership in the Soviet Union. But On a day to day basis, he was not one of the key policy players. Cheney inserted himself into the policy process for every major national security issue. And in some ways, one could argue he played a role closer to Henry Kissing than to George H.W. bush. As Vice President, he played a role as the key conduit for many foreign policy ideas. And often, and this is crucial, the last person the President George W. Bush talked to before he made a decision.

[Martin DeCaro]

I'm happy you brought up Kissinger. I was thinking of him too, because like Kissinger, Cheney never apologized, even though he lived a very long life. Apologized for his missteps.

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, he didn't believe he had any missteps. I mean, his point of view was that American strength was necessary to build peace and security in the world and that we were not as strong as we should have been in the Clinton years, which is what left us vulnerable to the 911 attack, the devastating 911 attack, and that the war on Terror that he was really the author of. And I want to give our friend Jeff Engel credit for making this point in a recent publication. Cheney in some ways was the author of the War on Terror. He saw all that is necessary. He would admit that it didn't achieve all the things he wanted it to achieve, but his argument would be that we would have been much worse off without it. Cheney's criticism of Trump that you mentioned was that he believed Trump was making us weaker in the world. That was really his criticism of Trump.

[Martin DeCaro]

We'll return to the Cheney Trump connection in a little bit and the idea of a unitary executive. But as Vice President, what was interesting about Cheney is you mentioned this a little bit. When he was Defense secretary under George H.W. bush, he wasn't as powerful or as influential as he would become. You know, my reading of the first Gulf War and the drive to build the coalition to get Saddam out of Kuwait. Cheney was important, but not anything like. He was under the sun. George W. Bush, the sun. And in that first conflict, he did not want to go all the way to Baghdad.

[Jeremy Suri]

He was a hardliner, though he was very slow to come around to see Gorbachev as something different from other Soviet leaders. And he was very determined to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But you're correct, he did not want to extend the war. One of the lessons he took from Vietnam was not to fight long, extensive ground battles of one kind or another. But as you said so correctly, he wasn't really one of the key players. He had influence, of course, but George H.W. bush had a tight circle really built around his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, and one of his best friends in the world, his Secretary of State, Jim Baker, and the three of them and their deputies, including Bob Gates, who was the deputy NSC adviser. They were the people who, on a day to day basis, really made policy. Cheney was an influence, but he was an outside influence for that inner circle. With George W. Bush, he was the inner circle. And in some ways, even though Bush was definitely the decider, Cheney was the one kind of like Kissinger, who managed all the ideas and discussions that got to the president.

[Martin DeCaro]

So how was that possible? How did he become so much more influential and powerful? Because, you know, the George W. Bush administration had some heavy hitters too.

[Jeremy Suri]

Absolutely. And it surprised a lot of people that he in so many ways superseded Colin Powell, Secretary of State, one of the most respected people in the United States, Condoleezza Rice, NSC adviser close to the Bush family. Cheney inserted himself to all meetings. He inserted himself in the paper trail. He convinced the President to make him this key person. Presidents get the national security system that they want. Trump has the one he wants now, too. They get the system that they want. And what Cheney convinced W was that he needed Cheney as his vicar, as his key person on all issues. And so whether it was paperwork or meetings, it was Cheney or someone from Cheney's team, someone like Scooter Libby, who was always in the discussion, always playing a prominent role.

[Martin DeCaro]

I agree that Bush was the decider, maybe influenced by Cheney, but Bush was making the decisions. And a historian who makes that point is Melvin Lefler. I have his book right here. Confronting Saddam George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq, page 75. There was a dark side to the global war on terror. Vice President Cheney, who was charged with a mission to safeguard the nation from domestic sabotage with weapons of mass destruction, waged a tenacious campaign inside the administration to deny captives the rights guaranteed them by the Geneva Convention. He believed they should not be treated as prisoners of war, nor as criminals, but tried by specially created military commissions where their ability to defend themselves would be significantly circumscribed. Amid unsubstantiated rumors from several reliable foreign intelligence services that a small nuclear device had been smuggled into New York, Cheney deemed it imperative to extract intelligence from captured prisoners. He insisted the administration use every means at its disposal to achieve its objectives. He urged the President not only to create these military commissions, but also to permit the rendition and torturous interrogation of enemy captives in CIA prisons abroad. Torture rendition, which is Kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, preemptive war, limitless executive power known as the unitary executive. In the realm of foreign policy. To me, Jeremy, say those are Dick Cheney's ruinous legacies.

[Jeremy Suri]

I agree. I think we have to, as historians, contextualize them. Part of it grew out of a long standing frustration he had, going back to Gerald Ford, of working for presidents who were constrained by Congress, constrained by bureaucracy, constrained by public opinion. He had high regard for someone like Gerald Ford. But Gerald Ford, who came in right after Nixon's resignation and a very assertive congressman, was very constrained and Cheney was fighting against that. And then he had the awesome responsibility. This is at the center of Mel Leffler's book that you just read. He had the awesome responsibility of not only being in government when the 911 attack occurred, but being the person in the situation room with Condoleezza Rice. Because George W. Bush, the President, was in Florida at the time. And I think he was traumatized by that. And it led him to dig deeper into his frustrations with limits on executive authority and double down, not just on a unitary executive. I think Cheney for a while believed in a unitary, unbounded, we might even say authoritarian executive. And that is why not only is his legacy, as you call it, ruinous in some ways, it is the essential foundation for Trump, although they differ later on. No one since the end of the Cold War does more to expand presidential power before Trump than Dick Cheney.

[Martin DeCaro]

And he was never a president, which is amazing to say.

[Jeremy Suri]

Correct. But he provided the predicate, he provided the justification, he provided the face of it, and he allowed George W. Bush to make it look less harsh. In contrast to Trump, George W. Bush did not want to flaunt power. He wanted to have power. He felt he needed it after 9 11, but he didn't want to look like a power hungry monster so Cheney could play the role for him and help him gain that repository of power, the president that he needed to do the things he wanted to do, like rendition, torture, the Patriot act, which involved surveillance at home on a scale we hadn't seen before.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. I forgot to mention warrantless wiretapping. Lefler concludes this was not done out of missionary zeal or ideological bombast. He says that the administration, especially in the days and months after 9 11, was worried about another terrorist attack and they believed this was the way to prevent one. I think that argument, though, is less convincing when it comes to 2003 and the March invasion of Iraq that year, because Cheney and Loeffler concedes this went around. He went to other countries. He gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign wars where he made claims that were false. I mean, I don't know how you feel about that. I'm not sure I've ever asked you about this question, whether they were lying or not or just making honest mistakes. You know, whatever the case, he was terribly wrong about these claims that were designed to build up public support to go to war. The most important decision any administration can make.

[Jeremy Suri]

I agree. And I think there are multiple phases, which is what's built into your question. I do think in the days and weeks and months after September 11, 2001, they were convinced, as most of us were, that there were going to be more terrorist attacks and that emergency extraordinary measures had to be undertaken. Now, whether those were effective and, and appropriate is a debatable question, but I think it's a reasonable position. I think in retrospect we regret it, but it was a reasonable position. But then from there I think, and this is where 2002, 2003 are different, I think they become convinced that not only is there going to be another terrorist incident, but there's now an opening, an opportunity to do what we couldn't do under normal conditions. And this is what gets dangerous, right, when emergency becomes enabling, not just for self defense, but for what is really preventive action acting on future threats or acting on long standing threats. And Saddam Hussein had been, for all kinds of reasons, seen not just as a threat in the region, he was a regional threat, not a global threat, but he was also seen as a thorn in their side. And this was a chance to get rid of him. And they believed to reorient the Middle east. And that was too good an opportunity to pass up under these conditions at this moment.

[Martin DeCaro]

They've always had their eyes when I say they, Cheney, Wolfowitz, some of these others on Saddam. And I think Loeffler is just a little too kind, or maybe he gives them too much of a benefit of a doubt not to talk about his book the entire time here. And who am I to question Melvin Loeffler, who's the dean of U.S. foreign policy historians. But you know, Cheney talked about the Saddam al Qaeda connection, which was fictional. He talked about Saddam's nuclear weapons programs which were not in existence any longer. That was the VFW speech I mentioned. These were false statements and they did a lot to drum up support for the war.

[Jeremy Suri]

And I think there's a lesson in this because I do think they were false statements and I do think at times, they were lies. I don't think they intended to deceive people. I think they came to believe so deeply that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and chemical and other weapons of mass destruction, that they believed, number one, that if they didn't see the evidence of that, they weren't seeing the right evidence. But number two, they believed that it was okay to cut corners and even say some things that were not quite true because the larger truth was what was important for them. And that's the kind of lying that it was. It wasn't what we've seen from the current president where you're just saying whatever you can. This was actually for a larger purpose. So I disagree with Malka. I do think there's a missionary element to that. They felt that, you know, the truth was that they had to expose Saddam Hussein, and if they had to lie a little bit to expose the evil man, it was okay.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. The VFW speech was not vetted by the CIA. It actually ticked President Bush off, who did not confront Cheney directly. He had Condoleezza Rice try to reign him in, per Melvin Leffler. Will be greeted as liberators.

[Dick Cheney]

The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

I think that should be the epitaph, of course.

[Jeremy Suri]

And I think it is one of those areas, Martin, where historians are valuable, because rarely is anyone coming into a society greeted as a liberator for very long. Sure. When we arrived in Kabul, a small number of American special Forces with various Northern alliance forces in Kabul in Thanksgiving of 2001. We were greeted as liberators for a very short period. And then once people felt liberated, they wanted the liberators to leave. And that's certainly what happened in Iraq.

[Martin DeCaro]

Maybe it's unfair to describe somebody's entire life and career or boil it down to one statement. Right. I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me or to you. Right. But that one will live on forever. That was a comment that Cheney made when he was being questioned by the great Tim Russert on Meet the Press. And, you know, people remember the very end there when he says, we'll be greeted as liberators. But during that answer, Cheney was talking about how he and others in the administration have been in contact with Iraqi exiles.

[Dick Cheney]

President I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who devoted their lives from the outside to try to change things inside Iraq. Men like Kanan Makiya who's a professor at Brandeis, but in Iraq, he's written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately as a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

But these people did not know what was going on inside Iraq. So it just, to me, that indicated they didn't really know what they were doing.

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, this is a big problem, right, that when you're dealing with a society that's near totalitarian and you're trying to find alternatives to those in power, you often get stuck with people who are posers and liars and don't have legitimacy in that society. We kind of fell into this in South Vietnam. We certainly fell into this with Iraq. People like Ahmed Chalabi and others, you know, they spoke the right words, they looked the right way, but they were also seen as foreigners in the society from which they had come where they had not lived for a long time. It's very hard to establish alternative leadership to a long standing totalitarian. We're witnessing that with Hamas now.

[Martin DeCaro]

How do you feel about the fact that Cheney never really paid a price? Not just Cheney, okay. He wasn't Darth Vader. There are a lot of other people, including his boss, President Bush. There were never any. Well, real accountability here. Sure, reputations have been damaged. But as I said, torture, rendition, preemptive war, misleading the public, the disastrous consequences of the global war on terrorism. The invasion of Iraq destroyed that country. And Cheney himself never, like Kissinger, never admitted fault, never tried to make recompense. Even Robert McNamara did. McNamara gave an interview. He was in a documentary called, I think Fog of War or something like that.

[Jeremy Suri]

Errol Morris's documentary.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. Where he talked about what they were doing. They knew what they were doing. Doing was a crime. Cheney never did anything like that.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yes, I mean, Robert McNamara of course, didn't really apologize either. He blamed Lyndon Johnson, you know, so Cheney couldn't really do that because even though George W. Bush was the decider, Cheney was so deeply involved in decision making, even more so than Robert McNamara. I would argue that it was hard for him to do that. But most policymakers don't apologize, so it doesn't really surprise me. And they did pay a price. Martin, we forget, when Barack Obama ran for President, George W. Bush's approval numbers were about as low as Trump's are right now. Right in the high 30s. He was not Seen as a successful President Obama's election was a pretty strong renunciation. One of the things Obama ran on was getting out of Iraq.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's true.

[Jeremy Suri]

And that was the wrong war. The reason Hillary Clinton didn't get the nomination was she had voted for the war.

[Martin DeCaro]

Any vote that might lead to war should be hard, but I cast it with conviction.

[Jeremy Suri]

So in some ways, Cheney's actions produced Barack Obama. So I think what's more troublesome to me, Martin, honestly, is that not only were the people who made these bad decisions not really held accountable and broke the law, and they weren't held accountable. Torture. But it's that there are still people suffering from that. There are still people at Guantanamo as we speak. There are still people who have been held since 2003, 2004, 2005, without trial, without being charged, without due process. There are still kinds of surveillance that are being used that come out of the Patriot act and the aumf, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which interestingly came up at the Supreme Court in the discussion of tariffs. I was listening to that today. That has been used and stretched. Stretched, as my colleague and friend Stephen Wertheim, who you've had on, has pointed out, has been stretched to justify so many other uses of military force in Syria and Libya and elsewhere. So the continued misuse of power is actually what is most striking to me.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, the consequences of these ruinous policies continue to ripple. The structures are still in place. Neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden. Democratic presidents tried to roll back executive power. I mean, what president will. I want a president in my lifetime to do that? But about Iraq, we often talk about what the war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq did to the United States. All the dead soldiers, the wounded soldiers who've been maimed for life, the cost, trillions of dollars when you compute in all the health care that veterans are going to need for the rest of their lives in Iraq. Freedom House says Iraq is not a free country. It's in the not free category. It does hold competitive elections regularly, and actually, there is an election coming up in Iraq soon. However, Freedom House says democratic governance is impeded by corruption, militias operating outside the bounds of the law, and the weakness of formal institutions. Increasingly, Iran's regime has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. State officials and powerful militias routinely infringe on the rights of citizens through legal and extrajudicial means. There is not a chicken in every pot and an American flag in every window. Iraq was not transformed, and I think till the day he died, Cheney still believed that he did the right thing there, that it worked.

[Jeremy Suri]

I'd like to ask you about two of the comments that you have made that have gotten a lot of attention with respect to Iraq. Much has been made about what you said about being greeted as liberators. And about a year ago when you said the insurgency was in its last throes, more recently you defended that as, quote, basically accurate. With all due respect, sir, isn't that wrong?

[Dick Cheney]

No, I think with respect to the question of were we greeted as liberators, I think we clearly are viewed as liberators by the vast majority of the Iraqi people. No question we've had problems with a group of terrorists, insurgents, but that's a.

[Jeremy Suri]

Very small minority here. The relationship to Kissinger is interesting, right? And they actually did form a relationship, especially later in life. They both felt that things didn't work out the way they wanted them to work out, but it was still better than if they had not done on it. That's Kissinger's position on Vietnam and that's Cheney's position on Iraq.

[Martin DeCaro]

Our conversation with Jeremy Suri continues.

[Dick Cheney]

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[Martin DeCaro]

So as I said, executive power. No president has tried to rein it in. Cheney is considered an anti Trump person, but Trump should be thanking him. Not just Cheney, of course, but we are talking about Cheney on this episode. There are a lot of people who've contributed to this problem. You talked about Watergate early on the way Cheney came away from that saying actually it was wrong that the President had to step down or that Congress was asserting itself. Actually, I don't wanna mischaracterize this before I continue on with my question. I mean, Cheney's takeaway from Watergate was what exactly, Jeremy?

[Jeremy Suri]

His takeaway was actually not necessarily that Nixon shouldn't have resigned. Though I think he did think that Nixon should not have resigned. It was that you needed a presidency that was strong and capable and that the outgrowth of Watergate in the Vietnam War, two things he regretted and he was never a proponent of the Vietnam War. He was anti. Anti war. He didn't like the anti war position, just as he didn't really defend Watergate, he defended the reaction to it. He believed that the reactions to the Vietnam War and Watergate weakened the presidency too much and that American society suffered under Ford and Carter because with Ford you had a president who was constrained by Congress. He couldn't, for example, use covert activities in the same way. He couldn't, for example, send American forces overseas in the same way. And under Carter, you had a president who believed we shouldn't do those things anyway and that that weakened American power. The neoconservative argument was for the United States to rebuild a strong executive, an executive who would be better than Nixon in many ways, but an executive who use that power, as Reagan did in places like Nicaragua, in places like Afghanistan, in places like Grenada.

[Martin DeCaro]

So there is Watergate, but also another scandal that had a big impact on Cheney's thinking was Iran Contra, which is often overlooked in the Cheney story. He wasn't involved in the scandal itself, but I have. You know how you come on the show, Jeremy, it's story time with me. I got my books here. Iran Contra by Malcolm Byrne in the conclusion. More disconcertingly, the congressional and independent council processes failed to create a disincentive for future administrations against ill conceived exercises of presidential power. Iran Contra was, after all, largely a competition for control among the branches. Byrne goes on to say. In the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Cheney took the lead in expanding the reach of the executive branch. And in particular after the 911 attacks in early 2002, he lamented that ever since the Nixon administration, congressional demands on the White House to compromise on important principles of executive authority had caused erosion of the powers and the ability of the President of the United States to do his job. Cheney subscribed to the notion of the unitary executive, which was first raised by the justice department in the mid-1980s. The president had virtually exclusive authority to act in the national security arena. So Iran Contra, also very important for Cheney. Are we still living in the era of the unitary executive? I mean, how much does Trump owe to these ideas?

[Jeremy Suri]

I think he owes an enormous amount to them because the individuals who were in the Justice Department and the White House Counsel's office in particular, who wrote those memos to justify and protect people like George H.W. bush who were involved with Iran Contra and President Ronald Reagan, they had names that might sound familiar to you. John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh. They became the Supreme Court justices that would rule on, for example, presidential immunity. And many of the things that Trump did in his first administration, particularly around January 6, that he got away with, were because in some ways, the Supreme Court of the United States let him get away with them by slowing down much of the judicial activity and then providing certain information, immunity. And in the beginnings of Trump's second term, I do think it's changing now. I think they're gonna rule against him on tariff power. But I think at the beginning of his second term, they also have given him, especially through the shadow docket, a lot of leeway to use the executive, because they believe Kavanaugh and Robert, as well as Alito and Thomas, they believe in this unitary theory. They believe that there should be deference to the president, especially when the president says there's a national emergency, and that he can almost, it seems, use that for everything. You know, there's a national emergency at the border, there's a national emergency in Portland. I didn't realize, you know, everything was an emergency. I wonder what's not an emergency these days.

[Martin DeCaro]

And there's also the blowing up of boats in the Caribbean. I'm not sure what Cheney thought of that. I'm not sure if he ever commented on that. But I don't know if we can say so easily. Cheney rode to Trump, right? There was the Obama presidency in between. I guess the argument goes here is that Cheney contributed to the destruction of public trust and institutions, the forever wars, the 08 crash, which wasn't Cheney's doing, of course, but the whole mantra, you've heard it a million times. All the institutional failures post 9, 11, even going back decades before that, and the wrecking ball that's been thrown into the American dream and the middle class, all that has led to Trump. I don't think we can just say Cheney is number one on that list.

[Jeremy Suri]

The way I would put it is this is that Cheney created an environment that made it easier for Trump to argue for an authoritarian president. Cheney created the unitary theory of the presidency and the experience of the Iraq war. And what followed was a more authoritarian presidency. And so it enabled the authoritarian impulses of Donald Trump. Now, what was different, and Cheney should be differentiated here, is he was a deep believer in expertise and knowledge. He did lie sometimes, as we pointed out, but Cheney's mastery of the detail was actually what made him so influential in the Bush administration. He was sitting in, in the meetings and he understood the detail. So he was a highly competent person, and he surrounded himself with highly competent. That doesn't mean that they were good people. And it doesn't mean they always made good decisions, but they were experts. Trump has surrounded himself with dodo brains. And so he's using these authoritarian powers in a way that's even more reckless than Cheney. And compare, you know, Cheney's relationship with Rumsfeld to Trump's relationship with Hegseth and you see all the difference in the world. I don't like Donald Rumsfeld either, but Donald Rumsfeld was a serious person. Pete Hegseth is not a serious person as Secretary of Defense.

[Martin DeCaro]

But as we know, serious people can make catastrophic mistakes. Look at the best and the brightest. Look at Kennedy's cabinet that LBJ inherited. Right.

[Jeremy Suri]

Robert McNamara, who you mentioned, is a great example of this.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. And there is now a split on the right in the conservative wing of the Republican Party, or just in the Republican Party. I'm not referring to the Tucker Carlson antisemitism stuff. Foreign policy, the so called national conservatives, they despise Cheney. They like Trump's supposed restraint in foreign policy. I don't see that. So I'm not sure what they're talking about here as far as paving the road to Trump. There's more to this story than what Dick Cheney did. It's a bipartisan affair, an institutional failure. And the news media is also involved. And Empire is also a bipartisan project.

[Jeremy Suri]

All of these things are true. I just will react a little bit against it being a bipartisan affair, maybe, but it's much more a Republican story that's brought us to Donald Trump. President Obama used executive power as well, as did President Biden, but they were much more restrained, sometimes self restrained, than what we have seen. Obama made sure that there were legal justifications for every drone strike and that they were publicly released. We have had no public release of any legal memos that had to be written to justify the attacks on the boats in the Caribbean that we've been hitting. That administration has not even released its legal rationale.

[Martin DeCaro]

No idea who they're killing.

[Jeremy Suri]

That's qualitatively different from what Obama was doing.

[Martin DeCaro]

But, you know, when it comes to domestic policy, some would argue that the failures of the Obama presidency, I'm not saying that the country was a hellhole, economy seemed pretty strong. But going back to that slogan from 0809, bailing out wall street, now Main street, some would say that this populist moment is in part a response to the failures of the Obama presidency to fulfill, well, the hope that many people had that the American dream would be stronger coming out of It.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To some extent, I think that's true. I think it's as much, though, what Trump said repeatedly in 2016, which was that all the experts, including Republican experts, are lying to you. And why did that land as a criticism? Because just as you said, they had lied about weapons of mass destruction, and every respected figure, especially in the Republican Party, had made the case, as Cheney had, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But yet it turned out to be not only untrue, it turned out to be a reckless argument, because there wasn't even the evidence that they claimed they had that empowered Trump's anti elitism more than anything else. Because if they could lie to you about that, they can lie to you about vaccines. And if they can lie to you about that and vaccines, they can lie to you about banking, and they can lie to you about everything. Only believe the man who looks like you and shouts louder.

[Martin DeCaro]

I have one more question for you. But on this, on this note, and this is an issue we've discussed before. What really determines elections? Is it foreign policy or domestic policy? Even after the failures of the global war on terrorism, I still think domestic policy mattered more to people in 0809, the crash.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yes, yes, I agree with that. I agree. But again, that does come back to Dick Cheney. George W. Bush inherited from Bill Clinton one of the strongest American economies of the last 50 years. 50 years with a budget surplus. Remember that? It's hard to remember.

[Martin DeCaro]

They were arguing in 2000 during the campaign, what's the best way to spend the budget surplus?

[Jeremy Suri]

And because of the war on terror, we go in the exact opposite direction. It's similar to Vietnam. What becomes another quagmire basically takes our economy from the black to the red. And that has a deep effect. It raises interest rates, for example. It causes a lot of the economic instability and the bubbles that we see in 2008, 2009, that caused that major crash. So it is related to Cheney in that sense. If we had not fought the war and spent the money we spent in Iraq, our economy might have been a little better in 2008.

[Martin DeCaro]

So final thing here, the coda on Cheney's life. We have covered a lot of ground here, Starting in the 1970s, changes in the Republican Party. He became somewhat of a capital R resistance figure at the end. He voted for Kamala Harris last year. Part of this was personal. The way that Donald Trump treated his daughter Liz Cheney, the way former congresswoman who also turned on Trump because of January 6th. Everything you've heard in these Hearings thus far will help you understand President Trump's motives during the violence.

[Jeremy Suri]

You already know Donald Trump's goal to.

[Martin DeCaro]

Halt or delay Congress's official proceedings, to count certified electoral votes. You know that Donald Trump tried to pressure his vice president to illegally reject.

[Jeremy Suri]

The votes and delay the proceedings.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know he tried to convince state officials and state legislators to flip their electoral votes from Biden to Trump.

[Dick Cheney]

And, you know, Donald Trump tried to.

[Martin DeCaro]

Corrupt our Department of Justice to aid his scheme. But by January 6th, none of that had worked.

[Jeremy Suri]

Only one thing was succeeding on the afternoon of January 6th, only one thing was achieving President Trump's goal.

[Martin DeCaro]

The angry, armed mob President Trump sent to the Capitol broke through security, invaded.

[Jeremy Suri]

The Capitol and forced the vote counting to stop.

[Martin DeCaro]

Cheney thought that Trump was basically the destruction of the Republican Party. He knew, and that we do have a different Republican Party today where people like Dick Cheney don't feel welcome. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Whatever it is, we can discuss it historically here. I mean, it would have been crazy to think Dick Cheney would ever vote for a Democrat for president.

[Jeremy Suri]

It reveals to us how radical Trump is or how not conservative he is. Back to what we talked about before. Cheney was a true conservative. He believed in conserving American institutions. He believed in using American power to make American institutions stronger. He believed in building a strong presidency. He did not believe in creating cults of personality. I mean, he used. We didn't talk about this enough. His time as vice president, he was. Was prominent, but he. He was actually operating behind the scenes much more than in public. So he wanted to conserve and use power for the growth of the national interest and make the United States a stronger empire around the world. He saw Trump as destroying all of that for corrupt, narcissistic, egotistical purposes. And January 6th was the sort of center of that, both in terms of the symbolism of it, but in what Trump was doing it.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's the problem with the Republican Party today, is that the people who are in office now don't seem to have a problem with January 6th.

[Jeremy Suri]

The advantage Cheney had on 2000, he was out of power in 2021. Now, Liz Cheney was in power. She really put herself out there, and I think she deserves credit for that. But as a historian, one of the striking things about our country in the last four to eight years is the cravenness for power among those in elected office, particularly Republicans, and their willingness to almost tolerate anything so that they can stay in power. And that's a horrible thing to say. But it's true. And it's what has put our democracy in peril.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. I mean, they threw Liz Cheney, as Republican as you can get, out of the party, out of office.

[Jeremy Suri]

She believed that after January 6, that there was consensus within the party where she was. And then Kevin McCarthy, who was then the Republican leader in the House. And when he went and met with Trump and then came back and changed the position, what it was to her was not only the horribleness of this apology for an insurrection, but also that they would let this man, who had just lost an election and tried to steal an election, dictate where the party should go. And why were people doing that? Because they were afraid that he would tweet negative things about anyone who voted against him and that they would lose their primary. That's a cravenness for power. That's putting yourself before the nation at a key moment. I don't see how historians will write about that differently. And that will mean that this generation of Republicans. Republicans. Will live in ignominy for that.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes. I hope you live a long time, Jeremy, and one day write a book. Looking back on this period where you're able to figure out how our country rewarded somebody who did that on January 6th, tried to steal an election. Not just January 6th. That was the culmination of a crusade to steal an election and was rewarded for it with another four years in power.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yep. I agree. I agree.

[Dick Cheney]

Big changes are coming to Washington, and I want to be a part of them. And I want to thank my family for their love and their support and their willingness to join me in this campaign. It means more than they will ever know. We have a tough race ahead of us, but I look forward to this campaign, and I am absolutely confident we will prevail.

[Martin DeCaro]

On the next episode of History. As it happens, we're going to tackle tackle the subject that was supposed to be in this episode, but we changed schedules a bit because of the death of Dick Cheney. So coming up next, we're going back to the movies, the house of dynamite, and the potential for nuclear Armageddon in a world where there is another nuclear buildup. Joe Cirrencione returns to the show. That is next as we report history as it happens. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom podcasts are a pretty close companion and this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to Libsyn ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.