Respect and remembrance for Cheney from Bush, Biden and past vice
presidents as Trump is excluded
[November 21, 2025]
By CALVIN WOODWARD
WASHINGTON (AP) — They gathered at the Washington National Cathedral on
Thursday — former presidents, vice presidents, sworn political foes and
newfound friends — in a show of respect and remembrance for Dick Cheney,
the consequential and polarizing vice president who became an acidic
scold of President Donald Trump.
Trump, who has been publicly silent about Cheney’s death Nov. 3, was not
invited to the memorial service.
Two ex-presidents came: Republican George W. Bush, who eulogized the man
who served him as vice president, and Democrat Joe Biden, who once
called Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in
American history” but now honors his commitment to his family and to his
values.
“Solid and rare and reliable,” Bush said at the service of his vice
president, praising a man whose “talent and restraint” exceeded his ego.
“Smart and polished, without airs.”
Bush and others noted the understated demeanor of a man who nevertheless
wielded great influence in government. “Above all,” Bush said, “I wanted
someone with the ability to step into the presidency without getting
distracted by the ambition to seek it.”
Among the eulogists, Liz Cheney, the eldest daughter, only obliquely
addressed what amounted to a father-daughter feud with the president — a
man her dad had called a “coward” for trying to overturn his loss in the
2020 election.
She spoke of her father’s conviction that when confronted with a choice
between defending the country and a political party, the country must
come first. “Bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we
share as Americans,” she said.
Liz Cheney is a former high-ranking House member whose Republican
political career was shredded by a MAGA movement angered by her
investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Thursday, she
chose not to speak directly of Trump.
She spoke of seeing clouds in the shape of angels just before her father
died.
A Who’s Who of Washington, minus you know who
Moments before the service began, figures of recent but now receded
power mingled: Bush and Biden and their wives sitting in a row together,
former Vice Presidents Kamala Harris and Mike Pence chatting side by
side in their pew with Al Gore and Dan Quayle together behind them.
Biden greeted Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime
Senate leader, and his wife, former labor and transportation secretary
Elaine Chao. Behind them sat Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who spent
time talking with another former House speaker, Republican John Boehner.
All gathered among the soaring interior columns of the grand cathedral
known as “a spiritual home for the nation.”
Others delivering tributes at Thursday’s funeral were Cheney’s longtime
cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner; former NBC News correspondent Pete
Williams, who was Cheney’s spokesman at the Pentagon; and several of the
former vice president’s grandchildren.
“I’m happy to report that I haven’t given many eulogies," Reiner said in
his remarks. “Nobody wants a doctor who is great at funerals."
Reiner recalled doctors telling Cheney decades ago, after the first of
multiple heart attacks, that he should abandon his political ambitions
then. Yet he kept winning elections as a Wyoming congressman for years
after that.
[to top of second column]
|
Lynne Cheney, seated front right, and daughter Liz Cheney, seated
front left, look on during the funeral for former Vice President
Dick Cheney at the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday, Nov.
20, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Cheney, he said, was always the “calmest person in the room."
Cheney had lived with heart disease for decades and, after the Bush
administration, with a heart transplant. He died at age 84 from
complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his
family said.
Trump's vice president, JD Vance, on stage at another event in the
morning, was asked about Cheney and said: “Obviously there’s some
political disagreements there but he was a guy who served his
country. We certainly wish his family all the best in this moment of
grieving."
Vance was also not invited to the funeral, according to a person
familiar with the details who was not authorized to speak publicly
and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The White House lowered its flags to half-staff after Cheney's
death, as it said the law calls for, but Trump did not issue the
presidential proclamation that often accompanies the death of
notable figures, nor has he commented publicly on his passing.
The deeply conservative Cheney's influence in the Bush
administration was legendary and, to his critics, tragic.
He advocated for the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of what
proved to be faulty intelligence and consistently defended the
extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition
employed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush credited
him with helping to keep the country safe and stable in a perilous
time.
Bad blood between the Cheneys and Trump
After the 2020 election won by Biden, Liz Cheney served as vice
chair of the Democratic-led special House committee that
investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. She accused Trump of summoning
the violent mob and plunging the nation into “a moment of maximum
danger.”
For that, she was stripped of her Republican leadership position and
ultimately defeated in a 2022 Republican primary in Wyoming. In a
campaign TV ad made for his daughter, Dick Cheney branded Trump a
“coward” who “tried to steal the last election using lies and
violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected
him.”
Last year, it did not sit well with Trump when Cheney said he would
vote for the Democrat, Harris, in the presidential election.
Trump told Arab and Muslim voters that Dick Cheney’s support for
Harris should give them pause, because he “killed more Arabs than
any human being on Earth. He pushed Bush, and they went into the
Middle East.”
___
Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this
report.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
