Breaking news! Prince Harry & Meghan Markle and Former presidents and longtime Republican friends are set to attend the Nov. 20 funeral service of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died at 84.

Cheney died at 84 years old on Nov. 4 after complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. The architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq after 9/11, Cheney spent decades in Republican politics as a Republican congressman from Wyoming in the 1980s, Defense secretary for the elder President George H.W. Bush, and deputy chief of staff and later White House chief of staff for President Gerald Ford.

During the two-hour service, Cheney’s cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, spoke of the courage and perseverance Cheney demonstrated to fight through five heart attacks. Pete Williams, a former NBC News reporter and Pentagon official, said Cheney never abandoned his friends or those who helped him along the way. Cheney’s grandchildren and daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, also delivered tributes.

The political makeup of the mourners in attendance reflected a rapidly vanishing old Republican guard in a political era dominated by Donald Trump and a new appreciation many Democrats have for Cheney for his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a force in Republican politics for over 30 years and one of the most powerful people to hold the second-highest office in the U.S., has died. He was 84.

In a statement, Cheney’s family said he died Monday night, Nov. 3, of complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, surrounded by his wife of 61 years, Lynne, daughters Liz and Mary and other family members.

Before becoming vice president in the George W. Bush administration, Cheney served as defense secretary, White House chief of staff and a Wyoming congressman.

In the statement, his family called Cheney “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 to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

In 2000, Cheney was asked by Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, to help pick his running mate. In the end, it was Cheney’s own name that topped the list. He would, it was believed, provide gravitas and broad Washington experience for the younger Texas governor.

“He really wanted me to come on board because he thought I could help govern, be part of his team, and that he wanted me involved in everything,” Cheney told CBS’ “60 Minutes II.”

He was viewed as one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history; at the same time, he became a lightning rod for those who opposed the war in Iraq and the expansion of presidential powers.

“Cheney really drastically changed the presidency, the vice president’s role and our standing in the international community,” presidential historian Alexis Coe told CBS News.

In a statement Tuesday, Bush called Cheney a “calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges.”

“I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best,” Bush said. “He held to his convictions and prioritized the freedom and security of the American people. For those two terms in office, and throughout his remarkable career, Dick Cheney’s service always reflected credit on the country he loved.”

In recent years, Cheney saw his daughter Liz Cheney achieve political prominence as a Wyoming GOP representative in Congress known for her open criticism of President Trump. She lost her position as the top Republican woman in the House over her fight with Mr. Trump about his baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. She went on to serve as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and continued to warn of the danger that she said Mr. Trump posed to democracy, even campaigning for his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in 2024.

Dick Cheney cut an ad for his daughter’s failed 2022 reelection campaign backing her position, arguing that in U.S. history “there has never been an individual that was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

Cheney shaped Republican Party politics for a generation, but he cast his final presidential ballot in 2024 for a Democrat. In a statement, he said Mr. Trump “can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.”

Early life and rise to power

Richard Bruce Cheney was born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, and grew up in Wyoming. He attended Yale but dropped out after two years and instead finished his college education at the University of Wyoming. Cheney married his high-school sweetheart Lynne, with whom he had two daughters.

He then moved to Washington, D.C., to begin his career, having avoided the draft and the Vietnam War with deferments beginning in early 1966 because it took him six years to finish college, he later testified before Congress at a confirmation hearing.

By age 34, he was White House chief of staff for President Gerald Ford, the youngest person ever to hold the job.

In 1978, he ran for Congress and won the first of six terms in the House, representing Wyoming. In 1989, he was chosen to be secretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

In 1991, he oversaw the U.S. victory in the first Gulf War, when Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait. For years afterward, he defended the decision not to invade Baghdad.

“If we had gone on to Baghdad, if we had sort of accepted the responsibility for occupying the country, governing Iraq, putting a new government in place, running Saddam to ground, I think there would have been significant additional U.S. casualties,” Cheney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” in 1992. “I can’t say how many, but the proposition is how many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? And my answer to that question is, not very darn many.”

In 1995, Cheney became chairman and CEO of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field services company, his first corporate job. His salary and stock options made him a multimillionaire. But in 2000 he left the company to join the Republican ticket.

“This election is about real choices — we are talking about the future of our nation,” Cheney said at a 2000 post-debate rally in Kentucky.

The presidential campaign was bitterly contested and its outcome was undecided on election night, with Florida too close to call, though Bush had a slight lead. Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, asked for recounts in four counties, as Bush sued to stop the recounts. The race was ultimately decided five weeks after the election by a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court.

A turning point in history

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States proved to be the defining moment for the new administration — particularly, it seemed, for Cheney. Even as the U.S. struck al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, Cheney warned of a larger web of U.S. enemies, urging military action against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 200

Baghdad fell only three weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2003. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, and American forces began a long, deadly occupation.

“It’s hard to explain how important he was, actually, during those Iraq war days,” Republican strategist Kevin Sheridan told CBS News. “He was truly central to everything that America did to respond to 9/11. He’s obviously received a lot of criticism since for it.”

Even so, the Bush-Cheney team made national security the centerpiece of the 2004 presidential campaign.

“If we make the wrong choice, the danger is that we’ll get hit again,” Cheney said at a town hall meeting in Des Moines, Iowa.

The president and Cheney were returned to office in a close election.

But as the situation in Iraq disintegrated and U.S. casualties mounted, public opinion turned against the conflict and the administration.

In November 2006, Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress, swept in primarily by anti-war sentiment.

To his many detractors, Cheney was a man obsessed with secrecy, the threat of terrorism and strengthening presidential power.

Cheney and Bush ignored the critics.

But in his second term, the president broke with Cheney on the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the offer of talks to North Korea, and the refusal of a pardon for Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Libby was convicted in 2007 of lying to a grand jury but ultimately pardoned by President Trump in 2018.

At the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, Cheney appeared in a wheelchair because of a back injury. But the former vice president proved to be as pugnacious as ever in frequent attacks on the new president and his administration. “I think Barack Obama is a one-term president,” Cheney said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2010.

Heart transplant brings “a new day”

Cheney’s cardiovascular health was a problem throughout his life. He suffered a total of five heart attacks, his first at age 37 during his run for Congress.

In 2010, after his fifth, doctors implanted a battery-powered device to help his heart pump blood throughout his body. That bought Cheney time while he awaited a heart transplant, which he received in 2012.

“You wake up every morning with a smile on your face,” he told 60 Minutes in 2013, “because you’ve got a new day you never expected to have.”

Former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, attended Cheney’s funeral. So did five former vice presidents from both parties: Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle. Democrats like liberal commentator Rachel Maddow were also seated in the cathedral.

Trump and Vice President JD Vance, on the other hand, were noticeably absent. Neither was invited. No prominent Trump administration officials were there either.

“Though he was inspired to service by President Kennedy, Dick Cheney became a Republican, but he knew that bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans,” Liz Cheney said of her father, who endorsed Harris over Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

“For him, a choice between defense of the Constitution and defense of your political party was no choice at all.”

Mourners share memories of Cheney

As she departed the Washington National Cathedral, Sue Simpson Gallagher took a moment to reflect on her childhood memories of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Simpson Gallagher, who owns an art gallery, said she fondly remembers campaigning with the Cheneys and her father, former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, as far back as 1978.

“He was always looking for a joke, and my dad was always feeding him jokes,” she said with a laugh. “He was a stoic man, but a kind man, full of love for his country and his family.”

Brian Montgomery also remembered Cheney’s dry sense of humor. He recalled learning Cheney would be the vice presidential pick not long before being tasked with picking him up from the airport and transporting him for the official announcement. Montgomery needed a big car for the job and he agreed to borrow one from someone – only to learn it was a van decked out with shag carpeting.

“He gets in the van, doesn’t say a whole lot. He looks around. He goes, ‘nice van.’ We all burst out laughing,” said Montgomery, who ran two different presidential offices during the Bush administration.

Montgomery called the service a “proper and right sendoff for a great American.” When asked about the significance of Cheney’s passing for the Republican party, Montgomery acknowledged that there’s not many politicians of his time left.

“Every party ebbs and flows, and they tend to be sort of the personality of whatever the President is,” Montgomery said. “And so it’s not unusual, using your words, for one era to end and another one to began.”

-N’dea Yancey-Bragg

Trump’s name not mentioned by any of Cheney funeral speakers

The elephant in the room at Cheney’s funeral was the absence of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Nevertheless, none of the speakers mentioned Trump by name – not even Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney, a fierce Trump critic.

Liz Cheney spoke of her father’s love of country over party, saying that for him “a choice between defense of the Constitution and defense of your political party was no choice at all.”

It was a clear reference to Dick Cheney criticizing Trump as a threat to the nation and endorsing Harris in the 2024 election despite his longtime loyalties to the Republican Party. Still, Liz Cheney stopped short of saying Trump’s name.

At the same time Cheney’s funeral services began, Trump was scheduled to receive his intelligence briefing at the White House, according to the president’s schedule.

-Joey Garrison 

Cheney’s family, colleagues deliver humorous, emotional send-offs

The mood inside the cathedral was at times somber and silent as the crowd listened to the tributes from Cheney’s loved ones.

But each of the speakers – Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Cheney’s cardiologist, Pete Williams, a former Pentagon official who worked with Cheney, former President George W. Bush, and Cheney’s daughter and grandchildren – also elicited laughter from the audience as they shared humorous stories of Cheney’s life as both a no nonsense politician with a sly sense of humor and a “full-time rodeo grandpa” who loved family road trips.

After an emotional send off from Cheney’s granddaughter, Grace Perry, some guests wiped their eyes as Liz Cheney described her father’s final moments.

“His last words were to tell my mother he loved her,” she said.

–N’dea Yancey-Bragg

Liz Cheney says her father loved his country over his party

Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney and a former GOP congresswoman in Wyoming, said her father’s love of country always came over his loyalty to the Republican Party.

“Though he was inspired to service by President Kennedy, Dick Cheney became a Republican, but he knew that bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans,” Liz Cheney said during her tribute.

“For him, a choice between defense of the Constitution and defense of your political party was no choice at all.”

Both Dick and Liz Cheney endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election as they warned Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, was a threat to democracy.

Liz Cheney said her father was “a giant to the end, a lion of a man who loved and served this Great Republic.”

She also recalled a loving, attentive father who liked to read all the historic markers during family trips.

“That was the thing about Dick Cheney. He wouldn’t force his opinion on you or demand you do this his way,” Liz Cheney said. “He might not share his opinion at all if you didn’t ask. In fact, he was known to go long stretches of time without saying a single word.”

But she said, “If you watched closely, if you asked questions, if you listened when he did speak, you had the experience of seeing the world opening up in front of you.”

-Joey Garrison 

Cheney’s service was ‘consistent, faithful and noble,’ Bush says

President George W. Bush called Cheney “the model of concentration, alertness and composure,” in his tribute of his vice president.

“This was a vice president totally devoted to protecting the United States and its interests,” Bush said. “There was never any agenda or angle beyond that. You did not know Dick Cheney unless you understood his greatest concerns and ambitions were for his country.”

Bush said, “Across 40 years, his service was consistent, faithful and noble. All in all, not a bad showing for a career and a life, especially when you consider his sheer physical endurance.”

Cheney survived five heart attacks and a heart transplant.

-Joey Garrison

George W. Bush remembers ‘the Cheney way’

President George W. Bush said he was looking for “preparedness, mature judgment and rectitude” when he chose Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate in 2000. Cheney led Bush’s VP search.

“After weeks of these meetings, I began to have a thought I could not shake. I realized the best choice for the vice president was the man sitting right in front of me,” Bush said in his eulogy of Cheney.

Bush described “the Cheney way” as being calm, undramatic and reticent. He said Cheney was “sparing and measured with words.”

“In a profession that attracts talkers, he was a thinker and a listener,” Bush said, adding that when Cheney spoke up “you knew you were getting the best of a highly disciplined mind.”

Bush said he wishes more American got to see the Cheney that the people in Wyoming knew: “smart and polished, without heirs, courteous and approachable, seeing everyone as equal, a gentleman by nature, and a true man of the West.”

“Dick was funny and easy going in a way that his public image never caught up with,” Bush said.

Bush said Cheney offered to step down for Bush’s 2024 reelection to allow Bush to pick a different running mate.

“I thought about it for a while, but after for years of seeing how he treated people, how he carried responsibility, how he handled pressure and took the hits, I arrived back at the conclusion that they do not come any better than Dick Cheney,” Bush said.

-Joey Garrison

Dick Cheney remembered for his loyalty by NBC’s Pete Williams

Pete Williams, a former Pentagon official who worked with Cheney in the George H. W. Bush administration, said Cheney never abandoned his friends or those who helped him along the way.

Williams recounted how he offered to resign to Cheney when a magazine outed him as gay in 1991.

Williams, who later became a television correspondent at NBC News, said Cheney “wouldn’t hear of it.”

“And for several days after that article appeared, he would call me on the direct line to my desk at the Pentagon to ask how I was doing and to tell me to get on with the job,” William said.

Williams added: “Washington attracts ambitious people driven by a desire to serve their country. But many of those who become big names acquire staffers and then cast them aside as they rise in stature. Not Dick Cheney.”

-Joey Garrison

Cheney’s cardiologist says former VP had ‘courage’

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Cheney’s cardiologist, said the former vice president demonstrated perseverance and courage through his five heart attacks, multiple surgeries and a heart transplant.

“To have heart is to have courage,” Reiner said. “I don’t think courage is necessarily the absence of fear. Rather, it’s the ability to persevere even in the presence of fear. Time and time again, that’s what Vice President Cheney was able to do.”

Reiner added: “I was honored to be his doctor. It was an even greater honor to be his friend.”

-Joey Garrison

Was Dick Cheney a Democrat or Republican?

Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, was a Republican who served under President George W. Bush. He was not a Democrat.

Cheney was a staunch conservative and known as a war hawk on foreign policy. However, Cheney strongly opposed Republicans’ nomination of Trump, calling him a threat to the Republic.

-Joey Garrison 

Memories of 2000 election, Florida recount with Gore at Cheney’s funeral

Gore’s attendance at Cheney’s funeral is a flashback to the controversial 2000 election that put Bush and Cheney in office.

A razor-close vote in Florida prompted an automatic recount of votes, which resulted in the Gore-Liberman ticket making up ground.

The Supreme Court later intervened in the Bush v. Gore case, halting a recount that was initiated by the Florida Supreme Court. It was a 5-4 decision, with the four liberal justices dissenting.

Bush ultimately defeated Gore in Florida by 537 votes. The court’s intervention to stop the recount angers Democrats to this day.

-Joey Garrison 

Where is Bill Clinton?

Bill Clinton is not among the former presidents attending Cheney’s funeral.

A spokesperson for Clinton said the former Democratic president had an unavoidable scheduling conflict and that Clinton is keeping the Cheney family in his prayers.

Two former presidents, George W. Bush and Joe Biden, are in attendance.

-Joey Garrison 

A missed opportunity?

Cheney spoke in favor of same-sex marriage at a time when few Republicans were willing to do so, saying “freedom means freedom for everybody.”

Yet LGBTQ+ advocates say he missed an opportunity to further advance the push for marriage equality.

Cheney leaves behind a complicated legacy on LGBTQ+ issues.

–Michael Collins

Cheney’s flag-draped casket arrives for funeral

Cheney’s casket, draped in an American flag, was carried by U.S. service members up the front steps of Washington National Cathedral shortly before 11 a.m.

The funeral is about to get underway.

-Joey Garrison 

Harris, Pence, Fauci among mourners at funeral

Former Vice Presidents Kamala Harris and Mike Pence, as well as Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease, are among those at Cheney’s funeral.

Fauci is seated next to liberal television commentator Rachel Maddow, who is also in attendance.

There’s a heavy VP presence, with Al Gore also attending. Vice President JD Vance was not invited to the funeral. Cheney opposed the Trump-Vance ticket in the 2024 election and bucked his party by endorsing Harris.

-Joey Garrison

JD Vance offers condolences to the Cheney family

Vice President JD Vance offered his condolences to Cheney’s family on Thursday morning, as he participated in a fireside chat with the conservative outlet Breitbart News in Washington.

Vance made the remarks after Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked if he had a message for the Cheney family.

“My condolences go to Dick Cheney and his family. Obviously, there’s some political disagreements there, but he was a guy who served his country. We certainly wish his family all the best in this moment of grieving,” Vance said.

Vance was not invited to Cheney’s funeral, a source familiar with the matter said. He spoke at the Breitbart event as attendees began to take their seats at the service that’s taking place at the Washington National Cathedral.

—Francesca Chambers

Democrats, including Al Gore, attend Cheney’s funeral while Trump, Vance skip

Several notable Democrats – from former Vice President Al Gore to MS NOW commentator Rachel Maddow – showed up at Cheney’s funeral, while President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance did not.

The divide illustrates the rift between the current Republican Party, dominated by Trump, and the old guard led by the likes of Cheney and former President George W. Bush, who Cheney served under.

Gore lost the 2000 election to Bush and Cheney in one of the most controversial elections in American history that ended when the Supreme Court intervened to stop a vote recount in Florida.

Democrats criticized Cheney often when he was in office leading the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq, but they grew to respect the former vice president in his later years when Cheney refused to support Trump.

-Joey Garrison 

JD Vance offers condolences to the Cheney family

Vice President JD Vance offered his condolences to Cheney’s family on Thursday am, as he participated in a fireside chat with the conservative outlet Breitbart News in Washington.

Vance made the remarks after Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked if he had a message for the Cheney family.

“My condolences go to Dick Cheney and his family. Obviously, there’s some political disagreements there, but he was a guy who served his country. We certainly wish his family all the best in this moment of grieving,” Vance said.

Vance was not invited to Cheney’s funeral, a source familiar with the matter said. He spoke at the Breitbart event as attendees began to take their seats at the service that’s taking place at the Washington National Cathedral.

—Francesca Chambers

Mourners gather for Cheney funeral

Inside the Washington National Cathedral, mourners dressed in dark suits and dresses are milling about and greeting one another in the aisles as cathedral staff prepare for the funeral service. Empty seats in the rows closest to the white floral-adorned Canterbury Pulpit, where clergy will speak, and Stone Lectern, where Cheney’s former colleagues and loved ones will offer tributes, are reserved for family members and high-profile guests, including Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan and Clarence Thomas.

–N’dea Yancey-Bragg

Vice President JD Vance not invited to Cheney funeral

Vice President JD Vance was not invited to Dick Cheney’s funeral, a source familiar with the matter said.

Vance is a critic of the Iraq war and suggested after Cheney’s death that the deceased politician did a poor job as vice president.

The sitting VP will participate in a fireside chat with the conservative outlet Breitbart News ahead of the funeral this morning in Washington.

At the event, Breitbart reporter Matthew Boyle asked Vance if he had a message for the Cheney family.

“My condolences go to Dick Cheney and his family. Obviously, there’s some political disagreements there, but he was a guy who served his country. We certainly wish his family all the best in this moment of grieving,” Vance said.

—Francesca Chambers

Former Republican Vice President Mike Pence among funeral attendees

Former Vice President Mike Pence will attend Dick Cheney’s funeral in Washington.

Pence served as vice president from 2017 to 2021 during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. He is the nation’s most recent, former Republican vice president.

—Francesca Chambers

Participants arrive ahead of Cheney funeral

Before the sun rose on Nov. 20, law enforcement officials and members of the media had already gathered in the cold on the west lawn of the illuminated Washington National Cathedral where former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral will be held. As residents walked their dogs and jogged through the grounds, funeral participants, including many service members, filed through metal detectors outside the Gothic cathedral. Cathedral staff said the security measures were put in place “to ensure the health and safety of the staff and guests in attendance,” at the invitation-only service.

-N’dea Yancey-Bragg

‘A calm and steady presence,’ Bush remembers

Cheney, who served under Bush, was a hawkish, deeply partisan figure with broad knowledge of government and few qualms about the use of executive power. Bush nicknamed him “Vice” and “Big Time.” His opponents called him “Darth Vader.”