Former Vice President and longtime Republican Dick Cheney will vote for Kamala Harris in the November presidential election.

The news was first announced by his daughter, former House of Representatives member Liz Cheney, at a forum held in Austin, Texas.

Like his daughter, Dick Cheney is an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump and was particularly vocal during Liz Cheney's failed 2022 re-election campaign in Wyoming.

Dick Cheney released a statement Friday that was full of criticism of his party's candidate, Trump, while not explicitly endorsing Kamala Harris.

"In the 248 years of our country's history, there has not been an individual who has been a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," said the former Republican vice president in the George W. Bush administration.

"Trump must never be trusted with power again. As citizens, each of us has a duty to put country above party affiliation to defend our Constitution. That's why I'm going to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris."

Trump responded to Cheney via social media, calling former Vice President Cheney and his daughter irrelevant Republicans.

Asked for comment, Trump spokesman Stephen Cheng said: "Who is Liz Cheney?"

The campaign confirmed Cheng was being sarcastic and recalled Liz Cheney's online comment four years ago when she called Kamala Harris a "radical liberal".

Jane O'Malley Dillon, who is running the Harris campaign, said that "the vice president is proud to have the support of Vice President Cheney and deeply respects his courage to put the interest of the United States above the Republican Party."

83-year-old Dick Cheney rarely appeared in public during the past year. He has had heart problems since the 40s and had a heart transplant in 2012.

He was vice president in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2009. Over the years, he has been criticized by human rights groups for the major role he played in planning the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to massive civilian deaths and human rights abuses. In the case of Iraq, the war was based on false information that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.

Cheney's 2024 campaign announcement is similar to one he made while Liz Cheney was campaigning for a fourth term in the Wyoming House of Representatives in 2022. In it, he called Trump a "coward" for trying to "steal the previous election by resorting to lies and violence to stay in power after the voters rejected him."

That political ad didn't do much for his daughter in Wyoming, a state where the Cheney family was once revered, but now the citizens of Wyoming are squarely on Trump's side. Attorney Harriet Hageman, who was endorsed by Trump, defeated Liz Cheney by more than twice as many votes in the Republican primary.

Dick Cheney has been on friendly terms with Democratic politicians for years, but he has never endorsed any of them for president.

Both Dick and Liz Cheney endorsed Trump in 2016, but after Liz Cheney criticized Trump's foreign policy decisions and Trump criticized the "endless wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq started while Dick Cheney was vice president, their support waned.

If any of them supported Trump in 2020, they didn't do so openly. During that time, their home state of Wyoming gave Trump his most landslide victory of the year.

Liz Cheney voted to impeach Trump in 2021, and her investigation of the former president and the invasion of Congress by his supporters on January 6, 2021, caused great hatred for Trump, but also for most other Republicans.

In addition to Cheney's public appearance, several other prominent Republicans have endorsed Harris, while some, including Sen. Mitt Romney and former Vice President Mike Pence, have not said they will support Harris but have said they will not vote for Trump. Of all of them, only Romney, who will not run for another term, is still in office.