George W. Bush moves to defend Liz Cheney from Trump


Both of the Republican party's "living former presidents" are going head to head in the fight to save (or upset, depending on how you look at it) incumbent GOP Rep. Liz Cheney and her Wyoming house seat, The Wall Street Journal reports.
According to a copy of an invitation viewed by The Wall Street Journal, former President George W. Bush's "first campaign event of the 2022 midterms" will be a fundraiser to support Cheney, one of former President Donald Trump's top congressional targets. Meanwhile, Trump has thrown his support behind attorney Harriet Hageman in hopes that she upsets Cheney's bid for re-election. The competing endorsements thus pit "two of the biggest names in Republican politics against one another," the Journal writes.
Cheney is the daughter of Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, as well as a vocal Trump critic. Trump has called her a "warmongering fool" and a "horrible human being," per the Journal.
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Notably, Bush also found himself in Trump's crosshairs after denouncing domestic terrorism in his 9/11 commemoration speech — which many saw as alluding to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as a certain subsection of Trump supporters. "Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn't be lecturing anybody!" Trump fired back.
Bush's Cheney fundraiser is scheduled for Oct. 18, and co-hosts include, among others, Karl Rove, "a longtime political adviser for [Bush] who also consulted with [Trump] during his 2020 re-election campaign." Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
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Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.
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