The ex-lawmaker’s presence on the campaign trail will anger Arab-Americans, the former US president has claimed
Kamala Harris (L) and Liz Cheney greet supporters during a campaign rally in Ripon, Wisconsin, October 3, 2024 © Getty Images / Jim Vondruska
Former US President Donald Trump has hammered Vice President Kamala Harris for campaigning with Liz Cheney, a prominent neoconservative whom Trump accused of wanting “to go to war with every Muslim country known to mankind.”
Cheney, a former member of Congress and the daughter of former US Vice President Dick Cheney, endorsed Harris last month, and will tour the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week in a bid to drum up establishment Republican support for the Democratic nominee. Michigan is home to around 250,000 Arab-Americans, who reportedly favor Trump, due to their opposition to Harris’ position on the Israel-Hamas war.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump predicted that Ms. Cheney’s appearance will further infuriate the cohort.
“Arab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris, the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States and a Low IQ individual, is campaigning with ‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind,” he wrote.
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If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames, and your kids will be going off to War, maybe even a Third World War, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in charge,” he continued.
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Throughout her career in the US State Department and on Capitol Hill, Cheney has supported the invasion of Iraq, opposed President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and advocated for military action against Iran. Her father served as vice president to George W. Bush and was one of the most vocal proponents of war with Iraq. He was also party to the fabrication that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 US-led invasion, approved the use of torture on terror suspects, and green lighted the warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and emails.
Dick Cheney endorsed Harris last month, several days after his daughter.
Despite Trump’s staunchly pro-Israel stance and previous attempts to prevent Muslims from entering the US, the former president has been endorsed by Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit and one of only two Muslim-majority cities in the US.
Trump “assured me that his goal is to end the chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere. He doesn’t want wars,” Ghalib said in a social media post explaining his endorsement last month. “President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,” the mayor added.
In 202, Biden won in Michigan by just over 150,000 votes, with 70% of the state’s Arab-Americans backing the Democrat. This time around, Harris and Trump are in a nationwide tie for the Arab-American vote, according to a recent poll published by the Arab American Institute.