RIPON, Wis. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris rallied with Republican Liz Cheney in the birthplace of the modern Republican Party on Thursday as the pair delivered a double-barreled denunciation of GOP nominee Donald Trump as a dire threat to democracy.
With some people hoisting signs “Country over Party,” Harris told the crowd that “people of every party must stand together” to reject Trump, citing his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his failure to quell the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
It was an improbable moment — a Democratic nominee giving a nod to a rival party member and to the origins of the opposing party in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign — and it demonstrated how much Harris is attempting to win over moderate and crossover Republican voters.
Harris said of Trump, “He refused to accept the will of the people and to accept the results of an election that was free and fair.” “The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or party partisanship or self-interest,” she added. “Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised.”
Cheney is one of Trump’s most ardent antagonists. She is the daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and was the top GOP lawmaker on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, earning Trump’s disdain and effectively exiling herself from her own party.
“Violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do,” Cheney told the crowd as she recounted Trump refusing to act as he watched the violent attack on television. Someone in the crowd yelled “coward!” Others booed.
Adding to the surreal nature of the event, the crowd cheered references to Dick Cheney and to another Republican former vice president: Mike Pence, who refused to bow to pressure from Trump and attempt to stop the certification in Congress of Biden’s 2020 victory.