Dick Cheney announces he will vote for Kamala Harris saying Donald Trump can ‘never be trusted with power again’

Published

2 months ago

September 7, 2024

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Former vice president and longtime Republican Dick Cheney has said he will vote for Kamala Harris in this year’s US election.

The 83-year-old issued a statement announcing he will be backing the Democratic candidate because her Republican rival Donald Trump can “never be trusted with power again”.

Mr Cheney has been an outspoken critic of Mr Trump, most notably during his daughter Liz Cheney’s unsuccessful campaign to hold on to her Wyoming seat in Congress in 2022.

Ms Cheney, who said she would be voting for Ms Harris on Wednesday, was the first to announce her father’s endorsement when she spoke to Mark Leibovich from The Atlantic magazine in an onstage interview at The Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Friday.

“Wow,” Mr Leibovich replied as the audience cheered.

In a statement issued later, Mr Cheney said that “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 can never be trusted with power again,” he adds.

“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

Asked for comment after Ms Cheney announced her father’s voting intention, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “Who is Liz Cheney?”

The campaign confirmed Mr Cheung was being sarcastic by also pointing to a comment Ms Cheney posted online four years ago in which she called Ms Harris a “radical liberal”.

Mr Cheney, who served as vice president under Republican President George W Bush from 2001 to 2009, has made few if any public appearances over the past year or more.

He has dealt with heart issues since his 40s and underwent a heart transplant in 2012.

His statement on Friday was similar to a 2022 campaign ad for his daughter as she sought a fourth term as Wyoming’s lone congressperson.

In reference to the 6 January Capitol riots in 2021, he called Mr Trump a “coward” for trying to “steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him”.

The ad did little good for his daughter in a deep-red state that once held the Cheney family dear but is now thoroughly in Mr Trump’s corner.

Mr Cheney has been friends with Democrats over the years, but never supported one for president.

Both Cheneys backed Mr Trump during his successful 2016 presidential bid.

However, their support for him waned with Ms Cheney criticising Mr Trump’s foreign policy decisions while he was in office.

She later criticised him over the 6 January Capitol riots.

Meanwhile, while in office, Mr Trump had criticised the “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq launched when Mr Cheney was vice president.

If either Cheney supported Mr Trump in 2020, they were quiet about it.

Several other top Republicans have also come out in support of Ms Harris ahead of this year’s election while some, including Senator Mitt Romney and former vice president Mike Pence, say they will not be voting for Mr Trump.

Of them, only Mr Romney, who is not seeking re-election, is still in office.

US

‘Renegade’ UK could be spared from Donald Trump’s tariffs, US governor says

Published

5 hours ago

November 9, 2024

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'Renegade' UK could be spared from Donald Trump's tariffs, US governor says

The UK could be spared the impact of Donald Trump’s proposed trade tariff increases on foreign imports, a US governor has told Sky News.

In the aftermath of the Republican candidate’s decisive election win over Kamala Harris this week, attention is turning to what the former president will do on his return to the White House.

Mr Trump has said he wants to raise tariffs – taxes on imported products – on goods from around the world by 10%, rising to 60% on goods from China, as part of his plan to protect US industries.

But there are fears in foreign capitals about what this could do to their economies. Goldman Sachs has downgraded its forecast for the UK’s economic growth next year from 1.6% to 1.4%, while EU officials are anticipating a reduction in exports to the US of €150bn (£125bn).

However, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy – a Democrat – says he believes Mr Trump may consider not including the UK in the tariff plans.

Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the governor said he cannot speak for the president-elect but he has a “good relationship” with him.

His gut feeling is that Mr Trump will not impose tariffs on goods from allies like the UK. “But if I’m China, I’m fastening my seatbelt right now,” he said.

Mr Murphy said that Mr Trump may look favourably at the UK after its departure from the European Union.

The president-elect is considering offering the UK a special deal that would exempt British exports from billions of pounds of tariffs, according to The Telegraph.

“Donald Trump (has) some sympathy with the renegade who has courage,” Mr Murphy continued. “I think there’s some of that. I think that’s a card that can be played. We’ll see.”

Asked about whether UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer can build a rapport with the incoming president, Mr Murphy said: “I’ve been able to find common ground with President Trump, and I’m a proud progressive, although I’m a cold-blooded capitalist, which is probably the part of me that President Trump resonates with.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said she is “confident” trade flows with the United States will continue despite the tariff proposal.

Will Brexit help UK in Trump trade talks?

Jon Craig

Chief political correspondent

@joncraig

Could Brexit help Sir Keir Starmer and the UK government in trade negotiations with President Trump – who calls himself “tariff man” – and the US?

The suggestion – ironic, given the PM’s hostility to Brexit and his pledge for a “reset” with the EU – has been made by a Trump ally and confidant, albeit a leading Democrat.

The claim comes from Phil Murphy, governor of New Jersey, in an interview for Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News.

Murphy says he has a good relationship with Trump, who has a palatial home he calls the Summer White House, a 500-acre estate and a golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey, just 45 minutes from Trump Tower in New York.

He says his “gut feeling” is that Trump has sympathy with the UK for having the courage to pull out of the EU, “this big bureaucratic blob” and “that’s a card that can be played” by the UK in trade talks.

Really? As Trevor politely pointed out, that might benefit the UK if the prime minister was Nigel Farage rather than Sir Keir.

Mr Farage, however, speaking at a Reform UK regional conference in Exeter, described Trump as a “pro-British American president” who’d give the UK “potentially huge opportunities”.

But there’s one problem, according to the Reform UK leader. Favours from Trump will only come, he claims, “if we can overcome the difficulties that the whole of the cabinet have been rude about him”.

You can watch the full interview with Governor Phil Murphy as well as other guests on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am.

US

Internet searches for how to move abroad up by more than 1,000% after US election result

Published

14 hours ago

November 9, 2024

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Internet searches for how to move abroad up by more than 1,000% after US election result

Google searches for moving abroad increased by more than 1,000% for certain countries after the US election result became clear, data shows.

US searches for “move to Canada” increased by 1,270% in the 24 hours after the polls closed on the East Coast on Tuesday, according to Google data.

Similar queries about emigrating to Australia surged by 820%, the figures suggest.

Data from the Immigration New Zealand website shows 25,000 new US users accessed the website on 7 November – compared to 1,500 on the same day in previous years.

It comes after president-elect Donald Trump promised to carry out “mass deportations” of all illegal immigrants in the US during his election campaign.

In a TV debate on 29 June, he claimed there were 18 million undocumented migrants currently in the US.

The most recent government estimate was just under 11 million as of 1 January 2022. This is an increase of 500,000 in two years.

Speaking to Sky’s partner network NBC News on Thursday, Mr Trump said he will have “no choice” but to go through with deportations once he arrives back in the Oval Office.

Canadian law firm Green and Spiegel accredited the surge in queries about Americans moving to the country to Mr Trump’s campaign promises.

“Trump is obviously the impetus, but it’s also societal. The majority of Americans voted for him and some people don’t necessarily feel comfortable living in that kind of society anymore. People are afraid they are going to lose freedoms,” one of its immigration lawyers Evan Green told Reuters.

He added that his firm has been receiving a new email enquiry along those lines “every half hour”.

NBC exit polls show that immigration was the second-most important issue for Trump voters – beaten only by the economy.

Those who voted for Kamala Harris were most focused on democracy and abortion, according to the data.

US

US election: How big a win was this for Donald Trump?

Published

20 hours ago

November 9, 2024

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US election: How big a win was this for Donald Trump?

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. It was a historic realignment. Uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.”

Never knowingly understated, those were some of the words of Donald Trump as he proclaimed victory early on Wednesday morning.

Unlike some of his claims following the 2020 election, much of the statement above is supported by data.

President-elect Trump increased his vote share in 90% of US counties, compared with 2020, and became just the second Republican since 1988 to win the popular vote.

He also increased his vote significantly among many demographic groups which had been least likely to back him in the past.

Follow latest: Musk ‘joined Trump during call with Ukraine president’

There’s still counting to do, not least in battleground Arizona, but now the result is clear, where does his victory rank in history, and how much of a mandate does he really have from the American people?

How big was the win?

Kamala Harris would have won if she had persuaded 123,750 people in the right proportions in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to vote for her instead of Trump.

That sounds like a big number, but it’s less than 0.1% of the 140 million-plus people that cast votes in the election, and less than 1% of the voters in those three key states.

Presidential elections often tend to be even closer than this, however. Trump’s win this year is the clearest one this century that wasn’t achieved by president Barack Obama.

How big were the gains?

Trump made improvements almost everywhere, but he may still end up on fewer total votes than he won last time.

Despite the warnings of what was at stake at this election, it looks like the final number of people to cast a ballot will be lower than in 2020.

The Democrat vote is down around 10 million, while Trump’s vote appears relatively similar to last time, despite a growing population.

In terms of share of the vote, however, he increased his in more counties than any other candidate since at least 2004, and he recorded the highest Republican vote share this century in more than two-thirds of counties across America.

Most of those improvements weren’t by much, however. Just 120 out of the 2,800 counties recorded an improvement of more than five points – the lowest number by a winning president this century other than Joe Biden.

That’s reflected if you look at the number of counties he flipped from being majority Democrat to majority Republican – 95 counties so far. That number was also the lowest this century, other than that achieved by Biden and less than half of what Trump flipped in 2016, perhaps a sign of the recent partisanship in US politics.

What about the type of people backing him?

This tells a similar story.

President-elect Trump gained ground among most voter groups. The biggest increase in support was among Latinos (up from around a third to just under half) and younger voters (up from around a third to two-fifths) who were key to securing his win.

A smaller increase of eight points was enough for him to win majority support among people earning less than $50,000, who had backed every Democrat since Bill Clinton. And crucially, he narrowly took back the suburbs, where American elections are so often won or lost.

Those marginal gains across different groups helped Trump to win the key battlegrounds and go some way to broadening his coalition of voters, making it more representative of the average American.

The youngest voters, oldest voters, lowest-earning voters and Latinos all voted significantly closer to the US average than they have done in other recent elections. So, while they might not necessarily be “for” the president-elect as a whole, they were willing to vote for him.

While black voters and voters who didn’t go to college also moved further towards Trump, these two groups still differ significantly from the average in this election. There also remains a clear education divide with college-educated people much more likely to vote Democrat.

The Democratic decline

While much of the story so far is about a small but united shift in support, there were also some really historic and surprising results, particularly in the big cities.

In New York, Chicago, Detroit and Las Vegas, Trump earned a higher vote share than any other Republican since George HW Bush in 1988.

He still lost overall in the counties that include those cities, but once more it was a story of progress, whether it was down to who turned out or increased support.

But there were previous Democratic strongholds that did turn Republican, including parts of Florida like the formerly true-blue Miami-Dade, which has the second-largest Latino voting age population in America and backed Hillary Clinton by a margin of almost 2:1 in 2016.

Its one million-plus voters backed a Republican for the first time since 1988, and president-elect Trump got the highest Republican vote share there since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide.

He also returned Pinellas to the Republican column and made significant gains in other big population centres like Broward and Palm Beach Counties.

The turnaround of US politics since Trump shook it all up in 2016 means there are now only two counties, out of more than 3,000, that have voted for the winning candidate at every election since 2000.

Those are Blaine County, Montana, an agricultural area up on the Canadian border, and Essex County, a mountainous part of upstate New York, bordering Vermont.

Essex-man was a key part of some of Tony Blair’s big electoral wins at the turn of the millennium. Perhaps a different Essex-man rises again, this time to define America, as it moves towards the next period of its history.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.