Former Vice President Dick Cheney dies: Republican leader changed history through a conservative lens but later criticized Trump, endorsing Harris

Richard Bruce Cheney: January 30,1941— November 3, 2025

By Alexander J. Schorr

Tuesday November 4, 2025— Former Vice President Dick Cheney died on November 3, 2025, at the age of 84. According to a statement from his family, the cause of death was the result of complications with pneumonia as well as cardiac and vascular disease.

Cheney served two terms as Vice President under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009; he was considered one of the most powerful individuals ever to hold the office and a key architect of the post-9/11 “War on terror” and the US invasion of Iraq.

He previously served as the US Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, overseeing operations like the Persian Gulf War. At the age of 34, he was the youngest person alive to serve as the White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977.He represented the state of Wyoming in the US House of Representatives for a decade from 1979 to 1989.  He was also CEO of Halliburton, an oil company, stepping down in 2000 before becoming Vice President.

After leaving office, Cheney remained in the public eye, where he continued to be a vocal figure on political matters, and eventually became a strong critic of President Donald Trump: In the 2024 presidential election, he publicly broke with his party and endorsed the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, stating that Trump was “the greatest threat to our republic” in the nation’s history.

Cheney battled heart disease throughout his life, surviving five heart attacks and underwent a heart transplant in 2012. He is survived by his wife, Lynne Cheney, and their two daughters, Liz and Mary.

Cheney’s legacy

Dick Cheney, America’s most powerful modern vice president and strategist of the “war on terror, is best known for his role in directing then-President George W. Bush, who helped lead the country into the ill-fated Iraq war on faulty assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  

While caricatures of Cheney as the “real president” during this era in American politics do not fully or accurately capture the true dynamics of Bush’s inner circle, he relished enormous influence in the administration that he wielded from behind the scenes.

Cheney was at the White House while the President was out of town on the fateful day of September 11, 2001, when a second hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center in New York. “At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act,” he recalled in an interview with CNN’s John King in 2002. Cheney was determined to avenge the al Qaeda-orchestrated attacks and enforce US power throughout the Middle East with a neo-conservative doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive war.

The Vice President’s aggressive warnings about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction programs, alleged links to al Qaeda and intents to brandish terrorists with deadly weapons and attack the United States played a large role in laying the groundwork for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The United Nation’s top weapons inspector disputed that claim, and no WMDs were ever found during the invasion and prolonged war.

It's since been established that these justifications for war were not legitimate: congressional reports and other post-war inquiries later showed that Cheney and other administration officials exaggerated, misrepresented, or did not fully or properly portray faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction programs that Iraq did not in fact possess. One of Cheney’s most infamous claims, that the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, met Iraqi intelligence in Prague, was never substantiated, including by the independent commission into the September 11 attacks.

To the end of his life, Cheney expressed no regrets, certain that he had merely done what was necessary to respond to an unprecedented attack on the US mainland which killed nearly 3,000 people and led to nearly two decades of foreign wars that divided the nation and transformed its politics. “I would do it again in a minute,” Cheney said, when confronted by a Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2014 which defined the nation’s interrogation methods as brutal and ineffective, and responsible for damaging the United States’ standing internationally.

A Bizarre Accident

In addition to his controversial role in President Bush’s cabinet, the then-Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his friend and hunting companion, Harry Whittington, during a quail hunt on a ranch in Kenedy County, Texas. Cheney was aiming for a bird when he struck Whittington with birdshot pellets in his face, neck, and chest.

The incident occurred when Whittington, a prominent Austin attorney, stepped out of the hunting line to retrieve a downed quail. As another group of birds was flushed, Cheney swung his 28-gauge shotgun and fired, accidentally hitting Whittington, who was around 30 yards away and obscured by a gully. Whittington was hit by numerous pellets and suffered a collapsed lung and a minor heart attack days later due to a lead shot pellet lodged near his heart. He was in serious condition for a time but recovered and was discharged from the hospital about a week after the accident.

The accident was not publicly disclosed by the White House until the following day,  which created significant media criticism. Cheney later accepted responsibility for the shooting, calling it “one of the worst days of my life.” Whittington, a longtime Republican supporter, publicly forgave Cheney. Whittington died in 2023 at age 95; he still had some birdshot pellets in his body at the time of his death.

Cheney and Trump

Dick Cheney had supported Donald Trump back in 2016, despite his criticism of the Bush-Cheney era policies and his transformation of the party of Ronald Reagan into a populist, nationalist GOP. At the end of President Trump’s first term, who refused to accept his 2020 election defeat which led to the January 6 insurrection, Cheney, in a rare and public manner, chose to speak out.

Initially, Cheney supported Trump in the 2016 election, but his views soured over time due to Trump’s actions and rhetoric, particularly surrounding the NATO alliance and the 2020 election.

 Cheney strongly condemned Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results: “He is a coward. 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.”

By extension, the former vice president’s daughter, the then-Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, meanwhile, sacrificed a career in the GOP to oppose Trump after his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Cheney, long viewed as a staunchly conservative Republican, did a surprising about-face when Trump ran for election a second time, announcing he would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris.

"In our nation's 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic 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. He can never be trusted with power again,” said Cheney, who concluded, "We each have a duty as citizens to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris."