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The Situation Room

Former Vice President Dick Cheney Dies at 84; Polls Open in First Major Test of Trump's Second Term. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 04, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, Dick Cheney has died. The man widely viewed as the most powerful modern day vice president has passed away at the age of 84.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Cheney was a Washington power broker for decades serving in Congress, the Pentagon, and the White House.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

As we begin with the breaking news. The former Vice President Dick Cheney has died. He passed away last night at 84 years old.

BROWN: Cheney was surrounded by members of his family, including his wife of 61 years, Lynn, and his daughters, Liz and Mary. And in a statement his family wrote in part, Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing. We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country, and we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble, giant of a man.

BLITZER: Dick Cheney had a storied political career from serving in Congress to hunkering down in an underground bunker during 9/11, to speaking out against President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Gradually, I realized that the person who was best qualified to be my vice presidential nominee was working by my side.

BLITZER (voice over): For most of his adult life, Richard Bruce Cheney was the ultimate Washington insider.

DICK CHENEY, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: That I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I'm about to enter, the duties of the office on which I'm about to enter.

BLITZER: Named as George Bush's running mate in 2000, Dick Cheney quickly forged a public identity as a no nonsense disciplined gatekeeper, a powerful politician to whom and through whom access and influence flowed.

But his appearance at the very highest levels of government was by no means his first time in the national spotlight. He began his public service career in the Nixon administration, working in several White House jobs dealing with the economy.

After President Nixon resigned because of Watergate, Cheney worked for the new president, Gerald Ford, eventually becoming his chief of staff. When that 29-month presidency ended, Cheney returned to the land he loved, to his home in Wyoming. But it was a very short stay. Elected as a state's only member of the House of Representatives, Cheney returned to the Capitol and served for a decade in Congress. He was in the Republican leadership hierarchy when the first President Bush chose him to be his secretary of defense.

In charge of the Pentagon, Cheney was almost instantly engaged in two of the American military's largest and most complicated operations since the end of the Vietnam War. First, he led the removal of Panama's Manuel Noriega from power, and then Operation Desert Storm, the American and allied response after the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have, in effect, destroyed most of the Iraqi army. We have taken out most of the infrastructure. The lights are out in Baghdad.

BLITZER: His experience and steadfastness were of critical importance, and those traits were not unnoticed. Out of government for the first time in years during the Clinton administration, Cheney became head of the giant oil services company, Halliburton. It was a job that kept him steeped in defense and foreign policy, and a role that later became a lightning rod for his critics.

By the time his old boss' son secured the Republican presidential nomination, Cheney's health was a major concern, three mild heart attacks and a quadruple bypass before he was 50. Doctors gave him a green light. But shortly after the 2000 election, he suffered another mild heart attack.

CHENEY: I've got a doctor that follows me around 24 hours a day. That comes with a job as a vice president.

[10:05:00]

BLITZER: Cheney quickly became a target for Bush administration critics, especially for convening oil and energy industry representatives to a White House meeting and then declining to make public any contents of the sessions. And later, after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, he became at times invisible to the public. Only a few people knew where he was for much of the time.

But behind the scenes, Cheney was a driving force behind some of the biggest controversies of the Bush administration, including the second war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In 2007, I asked him about mistakes made and concerns among some Republicans that the war had damaged the Bush administration's credibility. CHENEY: Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash.

BLITZER: Cheney's health problems returned after he left office for a time drastically altering his appearance. Another heart attack in 2010 prompted doctors to implant a battery-operated device to help his heart pump blood. His health seemed to stabilize after a 2012 heart transplant at the age of 71.

Cheney largely disappeared from public life until emerging at the site of the January 6th insurrection one year after it happened. During a moment of silence on the House floor, Cheney accompanied his daughter, Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, also a member of the select committee that investigated the attack. He was warmly greeted by the House speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

CHENEY: In our Nation's 246 year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.

BLITZER: Later that year, Cheney tried to help his daughter's struggling primary campaign after she came under fire from former President Trump and has devoted supporters over her work on the January 6th committee.

CHENEY: He is a coward. A real man wouldn't lie to his supporters.

BLITZER: When Trump ran for president again in 2024 against Vice President Kamala Harris, Cheney joined his daughter in endorsing the Democratic nominee.

FMR. REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris.

BLITZER: American politicians have no shortage of critics, and Dick Cheney was no exception, but there were just as many, perhaps more who saw him as a resolute, disciplined loyalist who wound up becoming one of the most influential and powerful vice presidents in American history.

CHENEY: The most important thing that any vice president needs to know is to understand what it is the president he works for, wants him to do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And just a short time ago, former president George W. Bush released a statement that said, in part, Laura and I will remember Dick Cheney for the decent, honorable man that he was. History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation. Dick was a calm and steady presence in the White House and great national challenges. I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best.

BLITZER: With us here in The Situation Room, CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel. Jamie, like me, you covered Dick Cheney for a long time. Give us your thoughts about this man, this politician.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So, first of all, clearly, he was -- during the Bush administration, he became a lightning rod for critics, because he was powerful, because he was influential, because he supported enhanced interrogation and he had really lobbied for the war in Iraq, which then, of course, no, WMDs became very controversial.

It's interesting in your interview with him that we saw, and he never backed down on those positions. And I think it's important to know why. What he told me over the years was 9/11 changed him, being in the White House that day with the country under attack, not knowing what was going to happen next. He felt that his job and the administration's job was to protect the country. So, he never changed on that.

One thing that there's a whole generation that doesn't know that Dick Cheney, except now they know him as Liz Cheney's father. And I spoke to Liz several times in the last couple of weeks about her father, and I think it's important to also remember that this Republican's Republican, a conservative's conservative, broke with Donald Trump. And Liz Cheney really gives her father credit and says, the way he raised me is what gave me the courage of my convictions to stand up to Donald Trump, to vote for the impeachment on January 6th.

And she would like people to remember that her father -- you saw the political ad where he blasted Donald Trump. She wants people to know that her father picked country over party, unlike many Republicans. And I think we should all remember that both Liz Cheney and her father then endorsed and voted for Kamala Harris.

[10:10:00]

Never in their imagination, they had never voted for a Democrat for president before, but that was how strongly they felt about it.

BLITZER: He clearly saw Donald Trump as a major threat to American democracy.

GANGEL: Absolutely, no question. As he said in the political ad, he thought he was a dangerous threat. I will tell you early on in Trump's first administration, while Dick Cheney said he voted for him and endorsed him the first time, he was very concerned about the chaos in the White House, about Trump's temperament and certainly about his foreign policy. But January 6th, that was the break.

BROWN: Now, it's an open question how this White House was responded, his passing.

GANGEL: So, that's going to be very interesting. Will the president have flags flown at half-mast? Will he have -- and, you know, it is the speaker's choice to who lies in state. But as we know, Mike Johnson is going to check with Donald Trump. So, let's see if that happens.

BLITZER: We should know about that fairly soon too. GANGEL: Yes.

BLITZER: And we'll see what happens on that front.

BROWN: I also want to follow up because in the piece we talk about, you know how he was, in large part, the architect of the war on terror. And he rarely was seen in public because he was at an undisclosed location. You have some intel on that.

GANGEL: Right. So, after 9/11, it was very important that Vice President Cheney and President Bush be in different places for security reasons, because they weren't sure what was going to happen next. So, the term of art at the time was that Dick Cheney was in an undisclosed location and there was a lot of speculation about it years later, and he wrote about this in his memoir. The undisclosed locations were either Camp David, or one of his houses. It was -- he was hiding in plain sight, not hiding, but --

BROWN: Not an underground bunker.

GANGEL: No.

BLITZER: No, he was a target too. That's why he was an undisclosed location.

GANGEL: Absolutely. One other quick thing, you know, he got -- he was nicknamed Darth Vader by his critics. The family actually, if you spoke to Dick Cheney, you interviewed him, he's very soft spoken. He has a very different demeanor. So, Darth Vader actually became an inside family joke, and his hitch on his truck had Darth Vader on it. They would sometimes Photoshop pictures of Darth Vader over his face. They took it in good humor.

BLITZER: Jamie, stay with us. We have more to discuss. We're going to have a lot more after a short break, as we remember the life and legacy of the former vice president, Dick Cheney.

BROWN: Plus we'll go live to New York where voters are heading to the polls to choose their next mayor. We're going to take you live next.

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[10:15:00]

BLITZER: All right. This was just moments ago in New York City, Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor, and now the independent mayoral candidate in New York City, he is casting his ballot. Polls are open across the country for what's going to be a major test of President Trump's second term.

BROWN: In Virginia and New Jersey, voters are choosing their next governor. And in New York City, the president is sharing his support for Cuomo in the hopes of defeating Democratic Nominee Zohran Mamdani.

So, let's go live now to CNN's Jason Carroll, who's at a polling location in Manhattan. Jason, both Mamdani and Cuomo are sharing some closing messages. Tell us more about what they're saying this morning.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, when you think about their closing messages, I also want to talk to you about the voters, because what their message is and what the voters are saying, Pamela, it's sort of lock and step. I mean, what we've really seen, is in talking to voters all morning long, it's one thing versus another. It's fresh ideas and vision versus experience.

Mamdani, as you know, throughout his campaign has been running on issues of affordability, affordable housing, affordable transportation, affordable trial, childcare. Cuomo, for his part, also running on affordability, but also public safety and experience, experience governing, experience dealing with President Trump.

President Trump, as you know, has put it out there, that if a Mamdani win would mean that he might withhold federal funds with New York City, which is why he has come out in support of Mamdani. And earlier this morning, we heard from both candidates, both from Cuomo and Mamdani, and about what their thoughts are about how President Trump has influenced the race.

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ANDREW CUOMO (I), NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATE: President Trump, you know, President Trump is pragmatic. He is telling them the reality of the situation, which is if you do not vote, Mamdani is going to win. Who is Mamdani? I don't know, but he's a Democratic socialist. He'll bring socialism to New York City. New York City will not thrive with a socialist economy.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATE: We have a president who is looking to rip up the very fabric of this city, and that means being ready preemptively for these kinds of threats as opposed to hoping that they don't come to bear.

And we have a law department in New York City that used to be one of the most storied law departments in the country. It was on the front lines and fights for equal rights. That department currently has fewer lawyers than it did before the pandemic. We have underfunded so many of the most critical parts of city agency work. That's part of what it means to Trump-proof.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: And, Pamela, here's where both candidates can agree. Both agree that huge voter turnout will help their campaigns. And that's what we've seen in early voting. There have been more than 735,000 people in New York City who came out for early voting at this location alone, more than 16,500 for early voting.

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So, we'll see what, how the day ends up and turns out. Pamela?

BROWN: All right. Jason Carroll, thank you so much.

And coverage of Election Night 2025 begins at 5:00 P.M. Eastern right here on CNN and also streaming on the CNN app.

BLITZER: And coming up by this hour, there are new issues unfolding right now at airports across the United States, as the impacts of the shutdown are being felt coast-to-coast. We're going to have the latest CNN reporting straight ahead.

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[10:25:00]

BLITZER: Former Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84. His family confirming to CNN in a statement that he died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. He served under President George W. Bush for both of his terms.

BROWN: Let's bring in Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was Cheney's longtime doctor going back decades. Dr. Reiner, thanks for being here. First of all, our condolences to you.

Tell us more about what it was like to have Dick Cheney as your patient for so long.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: So, he was simultaneously the most complicated patient from a medical standpoint I've ever taken care of, and also one of the easiest patients to take care of, a very gracious and grateful patient, incredibly compliant. And he was easy to take care of.

BLITZER: Because he did what you said he should do?

REINER: Yes. He asked good questions, made, I think, good decisions, followed recommendations scrupulously, came back for follow-up, listened to his body and his heart. He was in a meeting in March of 2020, and he had some chest pain and he just called me and said, you know, I'm having some chest pain. What do you think I should do? And I said, well, I think you probably need another heart catheterization. He said, okay, I'll be there in a few minutes.

BLITZER: Really?

REINER: And he just handed his portfolio to an aid and said, we're going to G.W. And --

BLITZER: George Washington University in Aspen.

REINER: Yes. And he put his health before politics. And I think that's one of the reasons why he lived so long.

BLITZER: Yes. The Cheney family says the former vice president died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. Tell us about that.

REINER: Well, he, the vice president, had his first heart attack in 1978 when he was 37 years old, at a time when medicine and cardiology could do nothing to basically stop the heart attack. It was just all watchful waiting, and he had a big heart attack then. And over the ensuing almost 50 years, medical advances basically caught up to his disease at just the right moment. And he had atherosclerosis, which is a systemic disease. And, you know, finally after 50 years, you know, he reached a point in his life where he just didn't have any more resilience.

BROWN: And, I mean, he got this heart transplant, right, and it extended his life even beyond what you would typically see, right?

REINER: Yes, it did. So, he lived for about 13 years after the heart transplant.

I want to say that, as his doctor, I had an opportunity to see him in very private moments. And what struck me on many occasions was his personal courage. He was in trouble in 2010, really dying of heart failure. And really late at night, we told him that he needed emergency surgery to put this mechanical ventricular assist device in. He asked a couple of questions and said, let's do it, and, you know, same thing for his transplant. So, he faced personal peril with remarkable calmness, a preternatural calmness, which was really remarkable to see.

BLITZER: He was a good patient and saved his life. And it continued for a lot longer than a lot of experts thought it would.

REINER: That's right.

BROWN: And a blessing for his family, especially his grandkids, as we were talking about earlier.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, thank you so much.

BLITZER: Dr. Reiner, thank you for me as well.

There's some breaking news we're following right now. New York City Mayoral Candidate Andrew Cuomo is now speaking after voting in a Manhattan precinct. I want to listen to this. Listen.

CUOMO: I want to thank them for everything they've done. Doing it as a family is special. I did it with my father for many campaigns, a lot of good memories, a lot of good memories. And it's nice to carry on that legacy.

I want to thank you guys who have been on the campaign trail because this was a long one and this was a hard one, and you guys had to run all over this city. And I know what that's like. And then you have to deal with candidates, which is not always easy. I'm always a pleasure with some of the others. So, job well done for you guys, and I know it's been a long one.

I'm feeling very good. I feel the momentum is on our side. If you watch the poles, they've all been moving to us. I've been on the street. I feel it from people. I can tell you this, I voted a lot of times.

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It's the first time I ever walked into a polling place and the polling place cheered for me.