One picture from Thursday’s funeral for former Vice President Dick Cheney captured how much the Washington establishment loathes President Donald Trump.
It was an event where Democrats, Democratic mouthpieces, and old-guard Republicans rubbed shoulders in a putative show of mourning for a man who helped define the Republican Party of the early 21st century.
And they were united in despising the man who’s reshaping it — and the country at large.
Rachel Maddow, the progressive powerhouse of the newly rechristened MSNBC (it’s MS NOW, now), was in attendance after virtually building her career attacking Cheney and his role in the George W. Bush White House. She was even caught in a photo looking like she smelled something bad.
Started/Going pic.twitter.com/hZjB4udJRP
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On her right was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and medical establishment bureaucrat who did more to destroy trust in public health authorities than anyone since Typhoid Mary.
On her left, as USA Today noted, was former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, who led the party during the second Bush presidency. And next to Mehlman was James Carville, the Democratic attack dog who helped give the country Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Mehlman’s presence was understandable. Fauci’s less so, but as a lifetime Beltway bureaucrat, he had no doubt crossed paths with consummate insider Dick Cheney.
Was Dick Cheney a good vice president?
But Maddow and Carville, mourning a man they once publicly despised?
As conservative journalist, author, and editor of The Federalist Molly Hemingway commented, “Can’t imagine a more accurate picture of what the DC/NYC regime is like.”
Maddow’s opposition to the White House during the Bush-Cheney years helped solidify her position as one of the foremost — and shrillest — progressives in American politics. It was a period when, other than “W” himself, Cheney was the man most hated by the left.
Even in 2018, 10 years after leaving office, Cheney was still despised enough that he was the subject of a black-comedy biopic starring actor Christian Bale.
When Bale won a Golden Globe for the role, his acceptance speech included the memorably disgraceful line: “Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.”
That’s what the left thought of Dick Cheney, and Cheney didn’t change much on the core matters that made the left hate him. (The invasion of Iraq, among others.)
What changed was the political scene thanks to Donald Trump, the man who’s upending the D.C. swamp and infuriating the creatures that lurk in the mire.
Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, was the Wyoming congresswoman who played the role of Quisling for Nancy Pelosi’s witch hunt in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion. Cheney was one of only two Republicans to serve on Pelosi’s handpicked committee, which existed for the sole purpose of blaming Trump for the violence that day.
For that, Cheney received an 11th-hour pardon on Jan. 20 from outgoing President Joe Biden, along with all members and staffers of the committee.
(She also received a solid kick right out of office by the Wyoming voters she was supposed to be representing.)
Dick Cheney himself responded to the animosity between his daughter and Trump by declaring in October 2024 that he was actually voting for then-Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
(It will surprise literally no one that Harris was in attendance at Cheney’s funeral. Trump was not invited. Considering the event was by invitation only, by all accounts, the guest list pretty much said everything about what Hemingway called “the DC/NYC regime.”)
Two decades ago, the idea of Dick Cheney voting for a Democrat — and publicly announcing it — would have been laughable. Even a decade ago, the prospect of Rachel Maddow being a mourner at Dick Cheney’s funeral would have been a gallows-humor joke, with the punch line something like, “She was making sure he was dead.”
But in the decade since, and against unbelievable establishment opposition, Trump has the momentum in Washington. He’s hated by all factions of the permanent bureaucracy that makes up power in the capital.
And in the twisted politics of D.C., “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
For all of those gathered Thursday, where it was less about a patriotic display of mourning than a public show of spite, there is no greater enemy than Donald Trump — unless it’s the 77 million Americans who voted for him.
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