Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania in bipartisan appeal to Republican voters

Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney painted former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy and national security in a bipartisan appeal to Republican and undecided voters Monday in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as the 2024 presidential election enters its final stretch.

Harris and Cheney launched a three-state campaign tour with a moderated conversation in Malvern. The vice president and former congresswoman will also be in Michigan and Wisconsin on Monday.

“People around the world are watching,” the Democratic nominee said. “And sometimes, I do fret a bit about whether we, as Americans, truly understand how important we are to the world.”

Monday was Harris’s second time in Pennsylvania in as many weeks to talk to Republican voters uneasy about voting for Trump. The Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes are crucial to either Harris or Trump’s path to victory, and a CBS News poll conducted in early September had the pair tied in Pennsylvania with 50% each. Pennsylvania voted for Trump in 2016 but flipped to President Biden in 2020. 

Harris said she wants to turn the page on the past decade of American politics influenced by the former president and that her presidency would “embark on a new generation of leadership.” She said a Harris administration would not be a continuation of a Biden administration, saying she would bring her own ideas to the table.

The vice president also claimed Trump used the presidency as a way to “demean and to divide us.”

“I think people are exhausted with that, rightly,” Harris said. “And it does not lead to the strength of our nation to tell American people that we must be suspicious of one another, distrust one another.”

Cheney was in Republican leadership in the House before she supported Trump’s second impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and eventually was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger in a GOP primary. She explained that her decision to endorse Harris began with her being a conservative who prioritizes the Constitution over her political party. She said the choice between Harris and Trump on foreign policy is “absolutely clear,” calling Trump “totally erratic, completely unstable.”

“Our adversaries know they can play Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “They absolutely know they can play him, and we simply can’t afford to take that risk.”

The former congresswoman said the choice in November’s election comes down to defending the Constitution, pointing to Trump not accepting the results of the 2020 election and Jan. 6 as evidence the former president is a danger to democracy.

“I know the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the Constitution,” Cheney said. “You have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump, who, it’s not just us predicting how he will act. We’ve watched what he did after the last election. We watched what he did on Jan. 6.”

Cheney also said her experience working overseas before being elected to Congress shows how quickly democracies can fall apart.

“I know how quickly democracies can unravel,” she said. “And I know that, as Americans, we can become accustomed to thinking, ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about that here.’ But I tell you again, as someone who has seen firsthand how quickly it can happen, that is what is on the ballot.”

Cheney said she believes some Republicans will vote for Harris but won’t say it publicly.

Harris concluded with a plea to return to having a “healthy two-party system.”

“We need to be able to have these good, intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” Harris said. “Let’s start there.”

In a statement, Trump campaign Pennsylvania spokesperson Kush Desai said of Monday’s event, “Showing off irrelevant former ‘Republicans’ of the past at campaign events doesn’t change the fact that Kamala Harris is running to extend her record of unlimited illegal immigration, rising prices and endless wars abroad by another four years.”