BROOKFIELD — Kamala Harris, former GOP U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney and former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes joined forces Monday night to pitch moderate and Republican voters to support the Dem vice president this fall, arguing the country’s future is at stake.
Cheney, who traveled to Ripon earlier this month to announce her endorsement of Harris, argued to the crowd at an arts center that the framers knew people of character were needed for the presidency. But she said Trump has proven time and again that he isn’t worthy of his office through his actions and his latest threats on the campaign trail such as using the U.S. military against the “enemy within.”
Cheney said she has come to know Harris as someone who would be a president for all Americans and urged people to consider their lives outside of politics and how they decide which people to work with and trust.
“If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, like, you shouldn’t make that guy president of the United States,” Cheney said.
Sykes spent more than two decades on WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee as he played an influential role in helping shape GOP politics in Wisconsin. He was also an early never-Trumper, having a combative interview with Trump ahead of Wisconsin’s 2016 GOP primary and now regularly urging a vote against the former president.
He opened the event by acknowledging the unusual circumstances that brought him before the crowd to urge a vote for Harris, likening it to cats and dogs working together. He said the evening would be a serious conversation about what was at risk and wouldn’t involve talk about things like Jewish space lasers — a reference to comments by GOP U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Sykes added they also wouldn’t address “Arnold Palmer’s,” before he paused for dramatic effect amid some laughs, “… putting game.” That line referenced Trump spending part of a rally in Pennsylvania this weekend talking about the size of the deceased pro golfer’s genitalia.
Harris, who also did events with Cheney in Michigan and Pennsylvania, told Sykes her favorite assignment in the U.S. Senate was serving on the Intelligence Committee because members rolled up their sleeves and dispensed “with who is a Republican and who is a Democrat.”
“We were all Americans. We were all in that room with one singular purpose to concern ourselves as our highest priority with the security and well-being of the United States of America,” Harris said. “I think those things are at stake in this election.”
Ahead of the event, state GOP Chair Brian Schimming knocked Cheney after she had previously warned about the California Dem’s “extreme agenda.”
“Now the Harris-Walz campaign is trotting out Cheney in a desperate attempt to salvage their dwindling support in the final days of this campaign,” Schimming said. “Liz Cheney may have changed. But the facts about Kamala Harris remain the same: she is too extreme for Wisconsin.”
Harris and Cheney also took questions from three people in attendance described by Sykes as undecided voters. One asked about shoring up Social Security and Medicaid and another asked how to tell his family and friends that Harris could help restore some civility to the political process.
One woman, described as a small business owner from Madison, said she came from a conservative, Christian home and was a Republican until Trump. Still, she said she believes in a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion and she no longer recognizes the Republican Party after what she said was the “extreme radical agenda” that includes restricting birth control to bringing homicide charges for an abortion.
Harris said she’s had conversations with people who opposed abortion, but didn’t intend “for the harm that we are seeing” through restrictions various states have approved following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government, these folks in a state Capitol, much less Donald Trump, should not be making this decision for her,” Harris said.
Sykes, who used to regularly emcee events for the anti-abortion Wisconsin Right to Life, asked Cheney to weigh in as well.
The former congresswoman said she remains “pro-life,” but has been troubled by actions taken by some states that have resulted in women dying because they can’t get medical treatment or providers worried about facing criminal liability.
She said Trump has been “all over the place on this issue,” but pointed out he has regularly bragged that his appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court led to the 2022 ruling.
“I think that the bottom line on this, as on some of the other issues, is, you know, you just can’t count on him,” she said. “You cannot trust him. We’ve seen the man he is. We’ve seen the cruelty and America deserves much better.”
