[Music] welcome back to free media I'm Amber Duke and I'm Robbie Suave well the Democratic party has welcomed The Cheney family into its ranks both Liz Cheney and her father former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney announced that they would be voting for kamla Harris here was Liz Cheney explaining that decision I I'm certainly not a trump Republican I am a conservative um I think that that what's happened to the Republican party today um you know is is uh is indefensible and I hope to be able to rebuild uh as I said after this after this cycle but I also think it's really important for us as we're thinking about rebuilding as we're thinking about the future of the country to recognize that that that at the end of the day the vast majority of people in this country um want to know fundamentally that that their elected officials are going to defend the peaceful transfer of power and that they are going to put the Constitution first and and as someone as you know who's been a lifelong Republican um it's heartbreaking to me to see what has happened to so many of the elected officials in my party and and I know we can do better so look I agree with Liz Cheney that Donald Trump's Antics around the 2020 election were not good they were not even good for his re-election chances frankly um but that said you know the Cheney the idea that the chenes are some appealing or like morally upstanding I mean from a democratic standpoint the ideal that they are is crazy because the Democrats have spent years and years and years portraying Dick Cheney as Darth Vader and like this singular force of evil and then Trump arrived on the scene and all the previous um metaphors that Democrats and the mainstream media had used to describe Republicans seemed insufficient to them because they' already used all the most negative things and they're like wish we had saved for Trump but uh you know even from my own libertarian standpoint I don't think Dick Cheney's influence on the Republican party was particularly good uh that was the Republican party at its most interventionist at its most kind of big government um both domestically and then especially abroad which brought the party to ruin as it was not an agenda that actual Rank and file Republicans supported whether you're like a tea party conservative or the new right people or Libertarians or whatever no one wanted this version of the party that was mostly concerned about rebuilding the Middle East under the intellectual leadership the ideological leadership of Di chainy and that's why I don't even believe what she's saying there I don't think her or her father's fundamental concern is about quote unquote democracy which by the way is not even a top five issue in the polls for voters at this point so for her to say that that's what most people are thinking about when they're going to the polls is just wrong um but these are individuals who have dedicated their careers to neoconservatism to the grifting military-industrial complex to the United States democracy building around the world and getting involved in regime change Wars and I think they recognize whether it's good or bad that Trump doesn't support that in 2015 one of the early things he said on the campaign Trail uh the immigration stuff got a lot of attention obviously but he also talked about ending the war in Afghanistan and pulling troops out of Syria um and he was in active negotiation to withdraw from Afghanistan when he lost the 2020 election um that's something that resonates really deeply with working-class Americans because ultimately it's their kids who have to go off and fight and die in these wars in the most extreme cases like the 13 families who lost their children in the abig gate bombing during Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan and people like the chenes Adam kinzinger uh Bill Crystal some of these other never Trump Republicans all coincidentally are from that neoconservative wing of the party and I just think it's it's bottom line they're upset that the United States is not going to carry on their foreign policy Legacy yeah they're upset that they lost the uh ideological struggle for the trajectory of the Republican party on that front and that has now made them just made them Democrats because if you want to continue those policies it's the Democrats who are you know so upset with the trajectory of the party Vis Ukraine and Russia and what Trump and those kinds of people represent um but it's just important to remember that those those populars particularly the Middle East policies were just never popular with um with Republicans it's not what they wanted from their elected Republicans to prioritize regime change as you said that was that was costly that cost American lives got a lot of people killed over there did not make the Middle East more stable and secure did not benefit our own security I mean most people wish we could go back and undo particularly the decisions in Iraq do something probably different in Afghanistan even though the the the strike was justified given that they had attacked us but that it didn't really help to be involved there for years and years and years at when we we eventually ended up leaving anyway and that's you know the legacy of of the chines who who argued for the for the Iraq War based on information that ended up being wrong you know you can debate whether they some people say they deliberately lied about it it was misleading whether they were just wrong either way they were they were not correct that intelligence did not pan out that um Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we were under threat from them and we needed to depose him we all wish we hadn't done that because then Islamic extremism actually festers when you removed the secular dictators that were in charge of some of these countries these people don't have much influence not just in the Republican party but I think on the broader American electorate and while the mainstream media and perhaps some of the Democrats are treating this like some huge coup d' of the GOP it I think it just demonstrates how little they actually understand about what the Trump movement was about and the fundamental transformation that's taken place in both the Republican party and the conservative movement otherwise they would want to as far away from these people as humanly possible of course this also doesn't benefit the Democratic base which is becoming more Progressive every single year I'm just confused as to who they think these people are appealing to I mean even among Independents uh foreign policy is not really a top issue for voters right now and the chenes are not exactly uh people with the best approval ratings even among moderates so it's like what what is even the point of this someone on uh social media I think it was Zed galani pointed out that when Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders there was pressure quasi endorsement wasn't even like an official endorsement quasi endorsed Bernie Sanders there was pressure Sanders got pressure from like liberals and progressives to to um reject that endorsement because of the controversial views of Joe Rogan that don't fully align with Democrats on like I don't transgender stuff or Co or whatever was at the time um but you're not seeing any pressure for KLA Harris to reject explicit Cheney family endorsement from liberals even though obviously from a liberal perspective they should have or would have considered Dick Cheney worse than Joe Rogen it's it's funny that is a great point I mean they really did say that this guy was a war criminal he needed to be in jail uh that he was responsible for killing Millions of brown people I think is how they phrase it um and now to be parading around oop oopsie yeah too bad too bad so sad it's it's crazy I mean this is like the um sort of bizarre side effect of the political realignment that's been happening in America for the past 10 years is that you also get a even more nonsensical realignment between neocon conservatives and neoliberals it's just weird yeah well and it happens both ways because uh RFK Jr Tulsi now Republicans uh Kennedy has moved into the Republican fold and uh the chenes have moved into the Democratic fold it's just the the push and pull of uh of politics people's uh bumper stickers from back in the days would no longer make any sense no I well you're not a real conservative as L Cheney says unless you you vote for the person who disagrees with you on 95% of the issues all right there you go that does it for us today on free media please like share and subscribe and we'll be back with more content next week [Music]