The Dick Cheney Disconnect Within MAGA
The tributes pouring in for the architect of the Iraq War clash with the very foundations of the Trump movement.
With the death of the former Vice President Dick Cheney at 84, many are observing that his legacy is one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, with estimates of over 4 million dying directly and indirectly due to his “War on Terror.”
But there is also a strain of hawks who see Cheney as an honorable leader who did what was needed to protect America post-9/11. Some of these figures are championed heartily by President Donald Trump and even present unlimited U.S. support for Israel and fighting any related wars as true MAGA.
This doesn’t jibe.
Dick Cheney harassed Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, about his boss’s supposed isolationism and by 2024 would endorse Democrat Kamala Harris for president as a direct rejection of Trump, particularly on foreign policy.
Trump said at the time of the endorsement, also referring to the former Rep. Liz Cheney, who had also endorsed Harris, “Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races!”
As of this writing, President Trump still hasn’t said anything about Cheney’s passing, and his White House has offered zero condolences. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt even said that flags have been lowered to half staff at the executive mansion simply because the law requires it.
A cold reaction.
But even though the founder of MAGA doesn’t have a word to say about Cheney’s death, some of the biggest names that now wrap their arms around Trump’s movement are singing Cheney’s praises.
No less a Trump acolyte than the Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham shared on X Tuesday about Cheney, “On foreign policy, he was unashamedly aggressive against the forces who meant harm to the United States…. Vice President Cheney lived a life of few regrets.”
That’s one way of viewing his legacy. Another way is to look at things Cheney did in the past and what Donald Trump has had to say about them.
Which means, first and foremost, the Iraq War.
In 2002, Cheney said about six months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors—including Saddam’s own son-in-law.”
The WMDs propaganda was a key selling point for George W. Bush’s White House. It ultimately turned out to be false. In 2016, Trump said of the Bush-Cheney administration on a Republican presidential debate stage, “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none.”
That was a moment in which many GOP pundits declared Trump’s campaign DOA. But instead, he won the GOP nomination and the presidency.
Graham wasn’t the only MAGA-loving hawk writing lovingly about Cheney.
The Trump-endorsed Republican Senator Ted Cruz also saw Cheney in glowing terms, writing Tuesday that “Vice President Dick Cheney was dedicated to keeping this country safe.”
Sure, Ted.
The Trump-endorsed Republican Senator Tom Cotton shared similar sentiments, writing, “Dick Cheney dedicated his life to the service of our nation and the people of Wyoming. He was a constant champion for a dominant military, strong and confident American leadership, free markets, and individual liberty.”
Some Gitmo residents might quibble with that last part.
Broadly, you would be hard pressed to find much daylight between the foreign policy views of Graham, Cruz, Cotton and those of Cheney. But Trumpian foreign policy early on was seen as a dramatic break from the neocon hyperinterventionism of these GOP hawks. As Liz Cheney said of Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, “He’s completely abandoned the notion that America has to lead the world and he's invited Putin to invade our NATO allies. I mean, that is not anything consistent with any kind of conservative national security policy that I’ve ever been aware of.”
She had a point. Something was changing on the right on foreign policy at the time, even driving her and her father into the historically leftwing major party.
Frustrated pro-war radio host Mark Levin tried to stuff MAGA into a neocon box in June, screaming on X (all caps is original), “THIS IS THE MAGA FOREIGN POLICY!”
“So tired of the isolationists barking about the old and failed foreign policy of the past and insisting that they’ve uncovered the secret, new way forward—isolationism,” Levin contended. “There’s nothing new or good about isolationism which, in a word, is appeasement.”
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All the key buzz words are there: “isolationist,” “appeasement.” Words like those Cheney used himself for many years against the realists and restrainers in his own party.
It is customary for politicians to pay respects to presidents and vice presidents after their deaths. If these hawkish senators were just doing that, and simply that, that would be another story.
Silence from high profile political figures also speaks the volumes. You will not find tributes to Cheney from old-school MAGA figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and Sen. Rand Paul. You will find them from virtually every neoconservative.
Cheney is dead, and some of the biggest hawks associated with MAGA now hail his supposedly strong foreign policy. But MAGA began as a rejection of that—and Dick Cheney knew it.
