Bill Clinton commends Cheney’s ‘unwavering sense of duty’ after death
Former President Clinton on Tuesday praised former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died Monday night at age 84.
“Throughout his long career in public service, Dick Cheney was guided by a deep belief that he was doing what was right for America,” Clinton said in a short statement on the social media platform X.
“Though we often disagreed, I always respected his dedication to our country and his unwavering sense of duty,” Clinton continued. “My thoughts are with Lynne and the Cheney family.”
Cheney died from complications of pneumonia, and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement.
Clinton followed his presidential successor, former President George W. Bush, in commemorating Cheney’s life and legacy. Bush said history will remember his former vice president “the finest public servants of his generation — a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held.”
Bush recollected Cheney’s career, from being former President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff to being a congressman from Wyoming. Cheney served as the secretary of Defense for Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, before joining the younger Bush’s campaign to select a vice president. Before long, Cheney shared the ticket as the vice presidential nominee.
“As a young White House aide and chief of staff, a Congressman, a Secretary of Defense, and my Vice President, Dick earned the confidence and high opinion of five presidents,” Bush wrote.
Cheney’s “love for America was second only to his family,” the 43rd president said.
Cheney was one of the most influential vice presidents in modern American history and is considered one of the lead architects of the “war on terror” following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Cheney was among the second Bush administration’s officials criticized over false claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Cheney also claimed that there were connections between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq before the invasion, and suggested that Iraqi citizens would treat U.S. troops as liberators for “regime change.” But these claims did not materialize.
With the Obama administration entering the White House in early 2009, Cheney departed decades of political work with an approval rating of 31 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.
The release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2014 that concluded that enhanced interrogation methods were used during the “war on terror” was met with Cheney’s defense that he would “do it again in a minute.”
In recent years, Cheney was a critic of President Trump and endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” the former vice president said in a television ad for his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”