Liz Cheney joins Kamala Harris for Michigan pitch to disaffected Republicans

• Vice President Kamala Harris continued a pitch to conservatives crossover voters in Royal Oak Monday
• Harris was joined by former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican who told attendees ‘the most conservative value there is to defend the Constitution’
• Ahead of the event, Donald Trump’s campaign held a call with Arab American community leaders to blast Harris’ association with Cheney

Vice President Kamala Harris stopped in Royal Oak on Monday afternoon for an event with Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, highlighting the Democratic nominee’s effort to reach disaffected conservatives in the election’s final stretch.

“I don't know if anybody's more conservative than I am, and I understand the most conservative value there is to defend the Constitution,” Cheney said in explaining her support for Harris.

She called Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “absolutely unfit ever to be president again.”

In an event moderated by Maria Shriver, a former journalist who is supporting Harris, Harris and Cheney fielded a few pre-selected questions from an audience at the Royal Oak Music Theatre. They held similar events earlier in the day in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Michigan event served as an extended pitch for Republicans to come over to Harris, with Cheney as a star witness, someone who is deeply conservative but endorsed Harris over her concerns about the future of American democracy. 

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“I would just remind people, if you're at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody,” Cheney said. 

“And there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5th,” she added.

Harris has spent the final weeks of her campaign seeking to broaden her tent with appeals to independents and Republicans in Michigan, where she had rallied over the weekend with supporters in Detroit and Oakland County.

In her answers on Monday, Harris repeatedly returned to lines from recent stump speeches, relaying an anecdote about caring for her ailing mother and highlighting Trump’s prior comments suggesting the Constitution should be “terminated.”

Trump’s campaign has been making similar efforts to reach voters beyond the GOP base, most recently with a Friday night rally in downtown Detroit. Ahead of Harris’ event Monday, the Trump campaign held a press call with Arab-American leaders supporting the Republican nominee. 

Hamtramck mayor Ameer Ghalib, who has endorsed Trump, said Harris’ appearance with Cheney “is something that tells us that there would be more wars coming if Kamala Harris is elected to be the president.” 

Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, played a significant role in promoting war with Iraq while in office, and Liz Cheney has advocated strongly for supporting Ukraine in its defense against invasion from Russia. 

Trump, on his website Truth Social, called Cheney a “war hawk” and claimed “the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames” if Harris is elected.

Former state Rep. Martin Howrylak, R-Troy, attended the event and asked Harris what the U.S. could do to deter Russia from continuing its war with Ukraine. Harris did not directly answer the question, but she noted Trump’s friendly comments about Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. 

“If Donald Trump is president, Vladimir Putin will be sitting in Kyiv and understand what that would mean for America and our standing around the world,” Harris said.

Cheney followed up by attacking Trump’s increasingly isolationist views on foreign policy, noting, “not only is it not Republican, it's dangerous, and without allies America will find our very freedom and security challenged and threatened.”

Howrylak did not immediately respond to a Bridge Michigan request for his reaction to Harris’ answer.

Cheney fell out of favor with Trump-aligned Republicans after voting to impeach the then-president in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She later helped lead a congressional investigation of that incident but lost her reelection effort to a Trump-backed competitor, Harriet Hageman.

Since leaving Congress, Cheney has occasionally backed candidates from across the aisle who, as she put it, place country over party. The first was Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly. Cheney endorsed and campaigned with Slotkin in 2022 when Slotkin was running in the Republican-leaning 7th Congressional District. 

In her Monday event in Michigan, Harris called herself a “pragmatic capitalist,” countering Trump’s repeated false claims that she is a Marxist.

“I believe we have to invest in America's economy and in America's industry and America's entrepreneurs, and we can, at the same time, take care of those that are the most in need of just a little support to be able to not just get by, but get ahead,” she said.

Harris and Trump remain effectively tied in Michigan with two weeks until the election. With more than 1 million absentee ballots already returned and early in-person voting opening statewide on Saturday, major poll aggregations all place the two candidates within two percentage points of one another.