126. Dick Cheney: The Most Controversial Vice President in History?

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1:26Welcome to The Rest is Politics US. I am Katty Kaye here with Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony Scaramucci. Yeah. Do you like my light blue? So I left my earbuds at home. I had to go buy these. So that's the only color, Katty. I think they're very fetching. Very flattering. I didn't even manage to make my earbuds work. So here we are. But we are doing an emergency live stream on the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who I think any of you actually in the comments were already saying, why are we talking about Dick Cheney and isn't he pure evil and the Darth Vader of American politics? Somebody who took an enormous amount of power and of course was the architect behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

2:07And all of those, I think, are interesting comments and we'll address them. But I do think there's no doubt that, And Anthony, I don't know if you'd agree that Dick Cheney was probably the most powerful vice president in American political history. somebody who had a huge amount of power, who massively expanded spending in America, who expanded the whole concept of homeland security, which became the third rail of American politics, who took America and a coalition of pretty much unwilling allies into a war in Iraq, who claimed that he had evidence that there was collusion between Al-Qaeda and Iraq after 9-11, was behind much of the expansion of the use of torture in America.

2:50and for all of those reasons, I think, love him or hate him, and most of the people I have reached out to this afternoon who worked with him didn't love him. He's a very important figure, and I think it's worth us spending a few minutes looking at his legacy. Well, I mean, listen, I knew him. I did some fundraisers with him going all the way back to December of 2003, but not my cup of tea, Caddy. And I think for people that are saying, well, why would we do this? I think you have to do this because he is, in my mind, a historical pivot. And so I'll just say three things quickly. He is the George Washington of the forever war, number one.

3:33Number two, I think he caused Donald Trump. When you go back into the legacy situation, The arrogance, the hubris, all of this stuff that the Americans really don't like and would like to end forever wars emanates from Cheney. And the last thing is about executive power. Cheney was the progenitor of Project 2025, so he believed in something called unitary executive power. your colleague on Morning Joe, John Meacham, a very famous and historian, brilliant writer, prolific, said on Morning Joe, because I was watching, that he understood how to use power. I think one of our members is talking about it in the chat.

4:18And I would say, yes, of course, he did understand how to use power, but he didn't use it appropriately. He's also the father of the great lie. Okay. It goes back to him, Colin Powell, the late Colin Powell prior to his death. This exaggeration of the weapons of mass destruction came out of Cheney's office. They pushed it on Colin Powell. Powell, of course, was more trustworthy than Cheney. They couldn't send Cheney to the UN to make the declaration that we had slam duck in intelligence. And so, So, you know, again, we have 4 ,492 servicemen killed in Iraq, 200 ,000 Iraqi civilians dead, millions displaced, the rise of ISIS.

5:06You know, when I looked into it, I asked one of my analysts at Skybridge this morning, how much did we spend on the war? Two trillion. Okay, but what about the veterans' health care after the war, Caddy? And what about the post-traumatic stress? What about the suicides, the fact that we lose one American veteran a day to suicide? So Dick Cheney, not my cup of tea. Not a lot of people's cup of tea, but somebody who definitely had an extraordinary arc of experience in American power. He went from being drunk on a jail cell floor, having been arrested for drunk driving in Wyoming, in Rock Spring, and 10 years later, he was the White House chief of staff.

5:55He guided the White House after those incredibly turbulent liars, and I think people forget that, after Watergate in the Vietnam era. And he cut his teeth on what it took to have power. I spoke to one person who had worked in the Bush, G.W. Bush White House with him during the Iraq war and said he'd sit behind him in the cabinet room. And on the back of Dick Cheney's chair in the cabinet room, there were five different brass plaques, each one for one of the cabinet positions, cabinet level positions that Dick Cheney had held. I mean, I think only Don Rumsfeld in the Bush administration had been through more positions of power.

6:35So as John Meacham said, he absolutely understood power. There was a whole, I remember living through that period in Washington, D.C., and people would say it's not really George W. Bush that is pushing for all of this. Dick Cheney is the real power behind the throne. And when it came to the 2004 re-election for George W. Bush, there was quite a lot of pressure on Bush to get rid of Cheney to show who was actually in charge. But he kept him there. And it's interesting to see today that actually he has given a very glowing tribute to Dick Cheney. But for people who were looking at the war and thinking, why is America doing this?

7:12And what is the intelligence for somebody who had been as senior as he had been in intelligence circles to buy the intelligence of one Iraqi exile to pin 9-11 on collaboration with Saddam Hussein, I think is the thing almost for me that he will be most remembered for. when there was clearly no evidence. And it was one of the people in the chat is asking, why didn't he go after North Korea, which was the bigger threat? Why was he so obsessed with the Middle East? And it was the unfinished business, right, of the Bush senior term that they'd never got rid of Saddam Hussein. And George W. Bush felt that Saddam Hussein had tried to kill his father and they had never managed to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

8:00And George W. Bush decided to finish that job off and Dick Cheney egged him on. But he was massively controversial even at the time, wasn't he? I mean, I don't think it's us looking back today with all of the hindsight of the things you laid out, how much it cost, how many lives were lost. Even in 2003, Dick Cheney was controversial. Do you remember how he got the job? How you got the job or how he got the job? How Dick Cheney got the job, do you remember? There were various people in contention, right, for the vice presidency and he managed to just beat them all out. Oh, okay, okay. That's all true, but this is the quintessential part of Dick Cheney.

8:37Ready? He was in charge of picking the vice president. You remember that now? Yeah. And so the 2000 convention, they helsted it in Philadelphia. You had George W. Bush's dad there. All of the Republican Guard was there to help. And Cheney went through the resumes and he told Bush that none of these people are as qualified as me. And he went to the George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush said, yes, I like this. We should do this. And then he turned he hurt George W. Bush. You know that. I know that it's worth telling our viewers and listeners. George W. Bush had an opportunity to let him go in the 2004 election campaign, and he chose not to.

9:28And he, even today, he's speaking out in support of Dick Cheney. He could have, he knew the liabilities of Cheney by that stage. By 2004, the war was not as popular as it had been in America in 2003. That was, that war was, that election was a referendum. And why did, so why did Bush decide to keep him? Well, I mean, again, for me, I think he kept them because of continuity. I think he kept them because Bush was a big loyalty guy. I think he kept them to show that he wasn't an insecure guy. This was a insecurity thing, you know, oh, Dick Cheney. Yeah, but, uh, you know, I'm in charge. and so let me just prove to you without acting overly insecure by allowing him to stay where he was but he gave him an enormous amount of power and caddy i just got to tell you he hurt the country uh that deficit trajectory the arrogance you know we had this uh he was the anti-george marshall you know i'm in a hotel uh you're also in this hotel in another room but i'm in a hotel overlooking Grosvenor Square.

10:36This is the former U.S. Embassy. Outside my hotel is Dwight David Eisenhower. Dick Cheney was the opposite of Dwight Eisenhower. Okay. He wanted to project power and muscle power. He told Oliver Stone, the director, when Oliver Stone did the movie W, Oliver Stone called him and interviewed him. And he explained to Oliver Stone, unitary executive power. We're the most formidable military in the world. Let us flex on everybody and push them around the chess table like in a game of risk. Eisenhower didn't do that. Reagan didn't do that. But Dick Cheney said, we won the Cold War. We have the peace dividend.

11:21We are the largest military by a quantum, and we're going to use this military. We're going to use it and boy i gotta tell you we've done some really stupid things uh but that was at the top of the list uh and so listen you know i i my heart goes out to his wife and his daughters that loved him uh he was anti-gay until he figured out that his daughter was gay one of his daughters was gay then he became very conservative i mean he was in some ways he was an old school conservative very unlike the MAGA conservatives. I don't think anyone would describe Dick Cheney as MAGA. In fact, he had a massive falling out with Donald Trump, particularly after the insurrection of the 6th of January.

12:06But he was the kind of conservative who actually Trump wanted to crush. As much as he wanted to crush the kind of liberal conservatives like John McCain, he wanted to crush that wing of the Republican Party, and he succeeded in doing it. I mean, he literally took on Dick Cheney's daughter from Wyoming when she was running for Congress. I remember being out in Wyoming and meeting people who were voting for Liz Cheney, who'd put up yard signs saying Cheney and had had to discuss their own security beforehand because they were so afraid that if they put up the Cheney name in an era of Trump, they would get attacked.

12:42And that was driven by Trump. I mean, Trump took on that whole family. it's not it's an interesting I think one person I spoke to who had worked in the Bush administration saying this is a guy who will not be remembered well who history will not remember well but had so many different loops in the course of his lifetime and it was I don't think any of us saw coming the huge fallout between Donald Trump and Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney and the Cheney family at the end of his lifetime and the way he made a point in the last election, in the 2024 election, of saying, I'm not voting for Donald Trump.

13:20I'm voting for Kamala Harris, which for a stalwart conservative was quite something to say. Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to tell this story. It's personal to me. I may have said it once before on our podcast, but it's worthy of repeating it here. I was with Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney in Woody Johnson, the former now ambassador to the United Kingdom and the owner of the New York Jets. We were in his apartment, Trump International, the hotel there. Woody had a beautiful three or four bedroom condo overlooking Central Park. We were hosting a fundraiser for Liz Cheney. I was working for Trump.

14:01Ambassador Johnson was not a Trumper. He was a John McCain, Mitt Romney, George Bush, that sort of a guy, Jeb Bush. But he was hosting this event for Liz Cheney. We brought Dick Cheney to the meeting. And Dick Cheney went over to me and said, you're with Trump. I said, I am. Please come over here and talk to Woody about becoming a Trumper. And great regret. That doesn't reflect well on me, Caddy, but I did. I went over there to talk to woody with dick cheney and so dick cheney started on the side of donald trump and the irony is he was like literally the dr frankenstein that created donald trump and when the monster that he created was running amok in the village he wanted to pull the plug on donald trump right now somebody here is saying that they love mooch's name dropping so much you have never seen Galloway bound.

15:00Let me tell you something. Ask Galloway bound. This is tame. This is very tame. In the Oxford English Dictionary, when you look up name dropping, sir, there is a picture of me. I just want to make sure everybody knows it. There was a moment during the Bush presidency where a lot of what America was doing that Dick Cheney was the architect of in terms of black sites, waterboarding, the use of terror, what they called at the time enhanced interrogation techniques, was coming out and the public was knowing about it. And there were a group in the Justice Department who wanted to rein this in. I mean, this is so this is unlike today's administration, because that Justice Department did actually stand up for the rule of law.

15:49And a group of the lawyers, senior lawyers in the legal the council's office actually resigned over Dick Cheney saying, no, we have the authority to do this and we're going to prolong the authority to do this. And one person has said to me that they felt Dick Cheney was freaked out. That's the language they used by 9-11. And that I've always felt he used 9-11 as an excuse to go back into Iraq and finish the job they felt they hadn't done in George Herbert Walker Bush's presidency. But it is the turning, there is something of a turning point there at which he both sees an incredible opportunity to expand presidential power, doesn't give a damn about American budgets, will spend as much as it takes, cut taxes twice during the Bush administration, even though they're going on the kind of spending spree that makes me look moderate when I'm going around the shops.

16:44And I wonder whether there was some truth in that. I thought it was a very interesting comment from somebody who knew him, had run-ins with him, said he was a very smart guy and thoughtful, described him as thoughtful, but said something happened on 9-11 that kind of freaked Cheney out. And if you look at his career, that is the moment where he takes this dark turn. That is the moment where Darth Vader starts emerging. Yeah, and remember, I mean, this is all, listen, I have said this, we overreacted, we made terrible mistakes. And obviously, President Biden went to see Prime Minister of the Dead and he asked to don't make the mistakes that we made.

17:22But Dick Cheney was the one that wanted. Dick Cheney was like, we're going to out muscle everybody. But what you learn about politics and you learn about real politics and common sense, you are better collaborating. You're better sharing interests. You're better respecting your enemies, your allies, your adversaries. You're better at doing it that way as opposed to doing what Dick Cheney wanted, which was to show you guys what we're all capable of. And by the way, what he showed us was we have limitations to our capabilities. We might be the most powerful military in the world. America was shown to be fallible and not omnipotent.

18:06We went from Taliban to the Taliban in 20 years. And the irony is that Cheney came in, you know, after the Vietnam War and realized what the Vietnam War had done to America. And it either, you know, his memory was failing him, but he forgot the lessons of the Vietnam War when he went into Iraq. Robert Paisor, 577. This is a great comment. I think the difference between Cheney and Trump is that Cheney would couch his imperial ambitions with language like democracy promotion. Anyone who wants to go back and remember this time, it's worth reading, and I go back to it sometimes, George W. Bush's second inaugural address, because you're quite right.

18:42That was the kind of apex of America saying it was going to spread democracy around the world. Those who lived under tyranny could always count on America to be their friends. It really was about, it was kind of neocons wet dream of all the things America was going to do to help people who were not living in democratic regimes. And of course, they didn't live up to the promise of that. And they couldn't live up to the promise of that. And I think that's another way that that era ushered in Donald Trump. You saw it in 2016, you saw it in 2020, you saw it in 2024, the pushback in America, even Barack Obama was not a guy who would have spoken like that, didn't want the idea of America going around the world and starting wars with the prospect of regime change and promoting democracy.

19:31I think it's very well said. Who said the following, Kat, are you ready? In our nation's 248-year history, there has never been an individual who's a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. Who said that? Dick Cheney said that. He said that to you. Dick Cheney said that, yes. he did on the eve of the election he said there's no greater threat and so uh because i have to say something good i just said 29 bad things about dick cheney he at least crossed the aisle to vote for vice president harris and he at least put the party behind the country to explain the danger of Donald Trump. But what he would really be mad at me for saying, which I'm happy to say, is I really think he was the contributory.

20:21I think he did a lot to create Donald Trump in our society. And I guess you can ask the question, and this sounds very cynical, but would he have been so outspoken about Donald Trump? Would he have said that Donald Trump was the greatest threat to the republic since its founding if it had not been for the fact that it was his daughter who actually was the one who was really brave in standing up to Donald Trump after the events of January the 6th, was one of only two Republicans to join the committee that investigated the activities of the insurrection and as a result had huge numbers of death threats and security problems, along with Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican, and was thrown out, literally, she was thrown out from the Republican Party.

21:06That was not George W. Bush's Republican Party, the party that threw people out because they did from points of view. Yeah. Is Trump going to lower the flags for Dick Cheney? Have we seen a truth social yet? I've been watching my phone, but I haven't seen one yet. I mean, I'm going to have a quick look now. No, he is. Oh, he's talking about Joe Scarborough and he's talking about SNAP benefits. but he has not yet, as far as I can see, mentioned Dick Cheney. Well, that's very interesting that you do not have the president making a comment on a former vice president. Well, I think it was worth us doing this time.

21:47A lot of people, including you, Anthony, a lot of people very critical of Dick Cheney, but he changed a lot in America. He changed a lot around the world. He changed the perception of America in the Middle East. Up until the invasion of Iraq, America had a pretty stellar reputation in many Arab countries. Donald Trump is rebuilding it now, but he's rebuilding it in a much more transactional way with personal relationships with some of the leaders in that area that his family have around their finances in particular. But that invasion of Iraq will be a stain on his legacy and his expansion of the use of torture by America also a stain on his legacy and the expansion of the budget deficit and the expansion of presidential power because he felt that after Vietnam, the presidency had given too much power away to Congress and he wanted to take it back again, I think does lead us to where we are with Donald Trump today.

22:43It's quite a legacy. Listen, again, my heart goes out to his wife and two daughters. And I do appreciate the service. When you go into politics, it's a rough business. And I do appreciate the service. But it was, you got to be very careful in this world. If anything, I learned one thing from Dick Cheney is watch the hubris, watch the arrogance, because it can get you in a lot of trouble in your decision making. Okay, we're going to wrap it up there, guys. Thank you very much for joining this live stream on Dick Cheney. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back later this week with more of The Usual Restless Politics.

23:21Good to be here, guys. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in.

23:29Hello, I'm David Ulushoge. And I'm Sarah Churchwell. This week on Journey Through Time, we are exploring the story of the gunpowder plot of 1605. The story of how a small group of Catholics engaged in what would have been the most devastating terrorist attack in all of British history. The plan was ruthless. Blow up Parliament, King James I, and most of his family, all in a single blow. The series will tell the story of treason and traitors, of a group of men led by the charismatic Robert Cadesby, who believed that the only option left to them to win their rights as Catholics was the violent destruction of the Stuart State.

24:06We look at the story of Guy Fawkes, the nation's most famous traitor, from his recruitment to becoming the plot's fall guy, and ultimately being tortured and killed. Finally, we find out why this plot is still remembered now, 400 years later. Listen to Journey Through Time wherever you get your podcasts.