President Donald Trump didn’t attend former Vice President Dick Cheney’s memorial service on Thursday. He wasn’t a no-show—he wasn’t invited.
It’s customary for sitting presidents to show up when former presidents or vice presidents are laid to rest. Trump’s absence breaks that norm—though in Washington, even the villains have enemies.
Cheney, the architect of post-9/11 executive expansion and a key figure in the Iraq War, died earlier this month at 84. In his final years, he became one of the few Republicans willing to defy Trump openly. He and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, ultimately voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris instead of the GOP’s nominee.
“We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” Dick Cheney said at the time.
Thursday’s service, held with full military honors, drew a bipartisan crowd. The turnout underscored a strange duality: Dick Cheney’s late-life rebellion against Trump left him isolated among his party, yet softened his image for some longtime critics.
The rift was cemented in 2022, when Dick Cheney warned that no one posed “a greater threat to our republic.” From that moment, the split with Trump was irreparable.
At first, someone close to the family claimed Vice President JD Vance had been invited. By Thursday morning, Vance’s aides clarified to Axios that he had not—and did not attend. Trump followed protocol by lowering flags to half-staff, but offered no public statement.
Most of Trump’s inner circle stayed away. Republican lawmakers with political ambitions followed suit, careful not to cross a president who still sees Liz Cheney as a top nemesis.
Democrats weren’t guaranteed guests either. Many still hold Dick Cheney accountable for the Iraq War, torture programs, mass surveillance, and a foreign-policy worldview that left countless civilians and U.S. service members in harm’s way. Old wounds don’t heal just because someone becomes a Trump critic.
Still, the room included political heavyweights. According to CNN, former President Joe Biden attended on his 83rd birthday. Former President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney’s wartime partner, was expected to speak. Liz Cheney and several grandchildren were on the program
Four former vice presidents—Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle—also attended, along with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan. Senior Cabinet officials from both parties showed up, as did congressional leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, John Thune, and Mitch McConnell.
CNN called the guest list “a nod to a time when Washington was not so polarized.” Generous perhaps—but it captures the political oddity of Dick Cheney’s farewell: a bipartisan tribute for a polarizing figure, minus the sitting president of his own party.
Dick Cheney’s break with Trump deepened after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He called Trump a coward in an ad supporting his daughter’s reelection, which drew Trump’s ire.
The president responded predictably—with mockery and threats. He called Liz Cheney “one of the dumber people in politics,” labeled Dick Cheney an “irrelevant RINO,” an acronym meaning Republican In Name Only, and at one point suggested guns be “trained on [Liz Cheney’s] face.”
Liz Cheney ultimately lost her 2022 primary to a Trump-backed challenger. But while still in Congress, she served as vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, prompting Trump to suggest she should go to jail and even amplifying calls for a televised military tribunal.
Of course, Dick Cheney’s defiance of Trump doesn’t erase decades of controversial decisions. He helped plan the Iraq War, which was built on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, a conflict that cost thousands of American lives and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians. As vice president, he presided over torture programs, intelligence abuses, a botched response to Hurricane Katrina, and the early cracks of the global financial collapse. Any attempt to cast his legacy as straightforwardly heroic ignores the trail of destruction he left behind.
Yet in death, some of that history has been softened. The White House offered no public comment about Trump’s absence.
And so Washington was treated to a rare tableau of irony: a man with a catastrophic record freezing out a president with a catastrophic record. One awful figure refusing to host another awful figure, even in death.
Republican infighting rarely reads like poetry. This moment almost does.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.