A rush transcript of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” airing on Sunday, September 8, 2024 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the “This Week” transcript archive.
KARL: Good morning. Welcome to THIS WEEK. We are just two days away from the first and likely only debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump right here on ABC Tuesday night. A debate that could very well be the most consequential in modern American history with the possible exception of the debate in June that doomed Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
This week featured another extraordinary moment in American politics. Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, long considered among the most conservative and partisan Republicans in the land, announced they are endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
The former vice president was once vilified by Democrats, labeled as a real-life Darth Vader, but his statement endorsing Harris offered an especially harsh view of Donald Trump. “In our nation’s 248-year history,” Dick Cheney wrote, “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”
Of course, the Cheneys are not alone. Some of the most prominent Republican leaders of the last two decades have also declared Donald Trump unfit for office, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, members of the McCain family, the former speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s own vice president.
And overnight we learned that former President George W. Bush will not be making any endorsement whatsoever. In other words, the only living former Republican president not named Trump is not supporting his party’s presidential nominee.
But despite all that, the vast majority of Republican voters continue to support Donald Trump. Our latest ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 93 percent – 93 percent of likely Republican voters support Trump over Harris. That’s almost exactly the share of Republicans who voted for Trump four years ago.
Will that change? Can Kamala Harris win over Republicans looking for an alternative to Trump?
Liz Cheney joins me now for her first television interview in months.
Welcome to THIS WEEK.
LIZ CHENEY, (R) FORMER WYOMING CONGRESSWOMAN: Thank you. Great to be with you, Jon.
KARL: So, bottom line, why did you make this decision to support Harris, and why’d you do it now?
CHENEY: Yes, I – you know, I’ve been voting for 40 years. My first vote I ever cast was for Ronald Reagan in 1984. I’ve never voted for a Democrat.
KARL: Wow.
CHENEY: And it tells you, I think, the stakes in this election. You know, Donald Trump presents a challenge and a threat fundamentally to the republic. We see it on a daily basis. Somebody who was willing to use violence in order to attempt to seize power, to stay inpower. Someone who represents unrecoverable catastrophe, frankly, in my view. And we have to do everything possible to ensure that he doesn’t – he – that he’s not re-elected.
Given how close this race is, in – in my view, again, it’s not enough. You have many Republicans out there who are saying, well, you know, we’re – we’re not going to vote for him, but we will – we will write someone else in.
KARL: Right.
CHENEY: And I – I think that this time around that’s not enough.
KARL: Well –
CHENEY: That it’s important to actually cast a vote for Vice President Harris.
KARL: I want to get to that in a moment. Be first, you’ve made it abundantly clear that you have had policy disagreements with Harris. You still have policy disagreements with Harris. But she has moderated her positions on a whole range of issues from where she was just, you know, just a few years ago.
Did those moderations and the efforts to present kind of a moderate face at the – at the Democratic Convention, did that make the decision to endorse her easier?
CHENEY: You know, the – I have never viewed this as a policy election.
KARL: Right.
CHENEY: But I think that – that it’s a very important point. If you look at Vice President Harris’ speech, for example, at the Democratic Convention, it is a speech that Ronald Reagan could have given. It’s a speech that George Bush could have given. It’s very much an embrace and an understanding of – of the exceptional nature of this great nation. A love of America. A recognition that America is a special place. A recognition that we all have to work together to ensure that.
And you contrast that to ensure that we maintain it. You contrast that with what we hear from Donald Trump, again, on a daily basis, that America is a failing nation, that America is a laughing stock. The trash-talking of the United States of America very much is part of the message that Donald Trump is – is pushing.
And so, at the end of the day, I think it’s important for people to recognize, he’s not a conservative. The policies that we’re seeing him put forward, including, you know, again, on an almost daily basis, this notion of embracing global tariffs, that he’s going to impose 100 percent, 200 percent tariffs, that is fundamentally an anti-conservative policy. It’s also a policy that I point out to friends of mine who say, well, we’re going to vote for him because of his economic conservativism, will choke off global trade, will likely lead us down the path that we’ve seen before, for example, in the 1930s, lead to – at that point it was a depression.
The important thing for people to remember about something like the tariffs that he’s promising, including – you know, in addition to the fact that it’s disastrous policy, he can do it alone. He does not need Congress, if he were to be re-elected, to impose those massive tariffs that – that will, in fact, kill the American economy and the global economy.
So –
KARL: I mean, in fact, he did some of that when he was in the White House last time.
CHENEY: And he’s – he’s promising – he’s promising far more.
KARL: To go to a new level.
CHENEY: Right.
KARL: So, but – but before I leave Harris’ policies. Back in 2019, when she was running for the Democratic nomination, she took a range of positions, Medicare for all. She suggested she would favor abolishing ICE, decriminalizing illegal border crossings. A whole range of – of issues that she has now, you know, apparently changed. Would you still have been able to endorse Kamala Harris if it was the Kamala Harris of 2019 and 2020?
CHENEY: Look, I – I think that she has changed in a number of very important ways on issues that matter. And I – I would encourage independents to look at where she is on these policy issues today. I would encourage independents to compare where she is today with where Donald Trump is on these issues.
And so, I think, from a policy perspective, it is very important to recognize the change, to recognize that she understands that this election is going to require a coalition of people from across the political spectrum supporting her, and – and that also necessitates an understanding that you’ve got to govern for all of those people. And on top of all of that, the Republicans have nominated somebody who – who, you know, is depraved. Somebody who shows us every day that – that, you know, he has tendencies and he’s willing to embrace things that are fundamentally a danger to – to this nation and to our Constitution. So, the choice, in my view, is not a close one.
KARL: But have you spoken to Harris in the process of making this?
CHENEY: I have.
KARL: And – and can you tell us anything about that conversation?
CHENEY: I’m not going to talk about the details of the conversation, except I would just say that – that she has a full recognition and understanding of the stakes of this race, and of the importance of reflecting the broad coalition that’s coming together to support her.
KARL: And voting for her to stop Trump, which you made it very clear is primary motivation here, is one thing. What kind of president do you think she would be?
CHENEY: Look, I think, you know, she has shown us, and you can watch again through the convention, you can watch in terms of the lessons that — that she’s learned as vice president, listen to her talk about her vision for this country, her vision for the future. I mean, we — we’ve been talking about economic policy.
You know, you look at national security policy — and again, there are certainly areas where I disagree with Biden administration, national security policy, where I’ve disagreed with Vice President Harris’s position on issues.
But when it comes to fundamental alliances, when it comes to the importance of NATO, for example, and how important it is for the United States to lead in the world, we’ve seen a sea change. We now have a Republican Party that is embracing isolationism, that is embracing Putin.
That, you know, we’ve seen just in the last week, the Republican vice presidential nominee willing to appear, willing to be interviewed by Tucker Carlson who is platforming pro-Nazis, is himself pushing pro-Nazi propaganda.
That is not the party of Ronald Reagan, and I believe strongly that if you’re talking about a national security set of issues and you care about America’s leadership role in the world, a vote for Vice President Harris is the right vote to make this time around.
KARL: It’s an extraordinary reordering of the whole political system on — when it comes to national security.
Who would Ronald Reagan be supporting in this race? Who do you think?
CHENEY: There — there is absolutely no chance that Ronald Reagan would be supporting Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn’t stand for any of the things that Ronald Reagan did.
And it’s another place where I would urge my Republican colleagues, both in the Congress but across the country, to really look at Donald Trump’s policies, to really look at the danger that he presents, to look at — at, you know, what he was willing to do to stay in power.
It’s — it’s a firm rejection not just of traditional Republican policies but of the constitutional order on which this country depends.
KARL: So what do you say to those Republicans? And there are a lot of them who are absolutely adamant they’re not supporting Donald Trump but they’re not taking the next step, they’re going to write somebody in.
And we’ve heard this from Mitt Romney. We’ve heard it from Mike Pence. We’ve heard it from Larry Hogan. We’ve heard it from a lot of — a lot of Republicans that are certainly anti-Trump.
Why are they wrong in not taking the extra step?
CHENEY: Well, I would say, you know, given the closeness of this election, particularly if you’re going to find yourself voting in a swing state, you’ve got to take the extra step. If you really do recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses, then — then it’s not enough to simply say, I’m not going to vote for him.
I would also remind them, you know what? It’s a secret ballot.
So I would prefer to have as many people as possible out publicly making the case. But at the end of the day, you just have to wrestle with your own conscience when you’re there in the voting booth.
And I would expect that you will see far more Republicans and independents, you know, when the time comes and they’ve got to make that decision make the right decision.
KARL: It’s — you know, there were a lot of talk during the primaries of the Nikki Haley voters, and a lot — some states seemed like even when she stopped running, almost a third of Republican voters were looking for an alternative to Trump and voting for Nikki Haley. She’s now saying that she is, quote, on standby to campaign for Donald Trump, to help him get reelected.
She’s also, of course, called him unhinged, unqualified to be president, diminished.
What do you make of Nikki Haley’s position on this?
CHENEY: I mean, I — I can’t understand her position on this in any kind of a principled way. I think that, you know, the things that she said that she made clear when she was running in the primary, those things are true.
And — and again, you know, we are — those of us who are conservative, those of us who believe in fidelity to the Constitution have a responsibility and have a duty to recognize, this is not about partisan politics, and — and the country is going to need to rebuild conservative — true conservative movement when we’re — when we’re through this election cycle.
But this November, casting a vote for Donald Trump or writing someone in means that you’ve made the decision in too many instances that so many elected Republicans have made which is — is to abandon the Constitution, to tell yourself that this is just simply, you know, a partisan choice. It’s — that’s not what we’re facing this time around.
KARL: By the way, are you still a Republican?
CHENEY: I’m a conservative.
KARL: Have you left the party? I remember because we — we spoke about this a while ago, and you said if Trump were the nominee, you would not consider yourself a Republican.
CHENEY: I — I’m certainly not a Trump Republican. I am a conservative. I think that — that what’s happened to the Republican Party today, you know, is indefensible. And I hope to beable to rebuild, as I said, after this – after this cycle.
But I also think it’s really important for us as we’re thinking about rebuilding, as we’re thinking about the future of the country, to recognize that – that – that at the end of the day, the vast majority of people in this country want to know fundamentally that – that their elected officials are going to defend the peaceful transfer of power, and that they are going to put the Constitution first.
And – and as someone as – you know, who’s been a lifelong Republican, it’s heartbreaking to me to see what has happened to so many of the elected officials in my party. And – and I know we can do better.
KARL: Trump has, obviously, made retribution a theme of his campaign. And he’s talked about prosecuting you. He’s done it a lot. I mean just again after you endorsed Kamala Harris. Are – are you worried about what will happen specifically to you if he – if he gets elected president again?
CHENEY: I don’t think about it in those terms. I think about it in terms of what’s going to happen to our country. And, you know, it’s – it’s – it’s not personal from my perspective with one exception, and that is that I’m a mother. I’m the mother of five kids. And – and it is personal to me that my children grow up in a country where they know they can depend on the peaceful transfer of power, that they grow up in a country where their elected officials put fidelity of the Constitution first. That’s how it’s personal to me.
It’s personal to me when I – when I listen to, you know, fellow Republicans in the past say things to me like, well, it’s fine, there are guardrails. You know, he – he – he can’t do that much damage. It’s just simply not true. That –
KARL: Well, I mean on those guardrails, we had the Supreme Court has now issued its immunity decision, declaring essentially that – that – that a president has immunity for anything that president may do, virtually anything that – that can be in any way defined as an – as an official act.
How does that immunity decision by the Supreme Court – what does it mean to it – the possibility of a second Trump administration?
CHENEY: Well, it obviously makes – makes the danger even greater. But when you look at what Donald Trump would be able to do with the levers of power, the extent to which he’s already said he – he will not abide by the rulings of the courts. You know, our courts can’t enforce their own rulings. If a president won’t abide by the rulings of the courts, the rule of law disintegrates immediately. He’s made clear that he will, for example, pardon the – the January 6th rioters.
And if you think about, you know, the Republican Party – this is another point where they’re – they’re presenting themselves now as a party of law and order. You know, Donald Trump sat for hours and watched people in his name brutalize the police officers, law enforcement, at the United States Capitol. He sat for hours and – and watched on television and ignored the pleas of his family and others saying, you have to tell the mob to go home. So, this is not a president who believes in the rule of law. This is a president who will use violence to achieve his own ends. And I think that the – the potential of the damage that he could do were he elected again is significant.
It’s also important to remember, on January 6th, the person who perhaps played the most – single most important role, in addition to the law enforcement officers who physically fought, was Vice President Pence, because he refused to do what Donald Trump was – was telling him to do, illegally and unconstitutionally throw out votes. J.D. Vance, who Donald Trump has picked to be his vice presidential running mate, has said specifically that – that he would, in fact, do that. That he would put Donald Trump’s orders and instructions ahead of the Constitution. And a – it’s – it is hard to imagine a much graver danger than a president and a vice president who will put themselves above the Constitution.
KARL: Do you think he’ll ever be held accountable for what happened on January 6th?
CHENEY: I think, number one, it is up to us, the voters, to hold him accountable in November, not to re-elect someone who did what he did.
Number two, I think that people need to look at what he argues and what his lawyers are arguing in court, in the January 6th case in particular, which is, you know, trying, at every moment, to suppress that evidence. The Select Committee put on a significant amount of evidence, available publicly, transcripts –
KARL: Thousands and thousands of pages of transcripts and documents. Yes.
CHENEY: That – and – and Donald Trump has had for, you know, years now. And the special counsel has, you know, come up with even more, developed even additional evidence, testimony in front of the grand jury by those who were the most senior leaders.
The American people deserve to hear that evidence, And Donald Trump is doing everything he can to prevent it because he knows what those senior officials said. He’s seen the evidence and the testimony.
The American people deserve to see it, but ultimately, we have to hold him responsible and accountable, and we have to make sure that he’s never in a position of power again.
KARL: All right, Liz Cheney, thank you very much for joining us live here on THIS WEEK.
CHENEY: Thanks. Great to be with you, Jon. Thank you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She’s in Pennsylvania, and she’s practicing for the debate. She’s locked herself in a room. She’s got a lot to learn. She shouldn’t even go to the debate. She should go back to Washington, D.C. and fix all the things she’s complaining about.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are you ready to face Donald Trump?
HARRIS: Yes, I am.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What’s the one thing you want to really get across?
HARRIS: Well, there is a lot, but, look, it’s time to turn the page on the divisiveness. It’s time to bring our country together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARL: That was Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on this week’s debate. Arkansas’ Governor Sarah Sanders joins me now.
Governor Sanders, thank you for being here, and I — people may not realize this, but as I understand it, you actually played Kamala Harris in the debate prep for the vice presidential debate four years ago. Isn’t that right?
GOV. SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS (R), ARKANSAS: I did. It’s been quite a while and I almost actually forgot that, I had that role and participated, but, you know, it was very difficult to get in that mindset, but I was glad to be helpful in the process and glad to see this debate finally take place and see this matchup between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. I think it is really important for the American people to see the big contrast that exists between these two candidates.
KARL: And I want to get to what Liz Cheney had to say and her endorsement, but before I get to that, on the debate, what do you think the stakes are? How important is this for former president Trump?
SANDERS: Well, I think it’s actually more important for Vice President Harris, somebody who doesn’t speak to the media, doesn’t take questions — in fact, at the end of this interview, Jon, I will have done more interviews during this election cycle than she has since becoming the Democrat nominee for president.
It is absurd that she does not take questions from the press, from the American people, and so I think this is actually a much more important night for her because it’s so rare that we hear from her, that we hear her take questions, or that we know anything that she actually stands for.
KARL: How is the former president preparing for this? What’s your sense? You have been with him before big moments. He likes to say he doesn’t need to prepare for a debate, but what is he doing?
SANDERS: He prepares every single day not only — I think the biggest way that he does that is by traveling around the country and actually talking to voters. He takes questions from the press on a regular basis.
So I think every day is debate prep for Donald Trump. He’ll go in game time ready just as he does for every interview, every rally that he does. This is not something that is a heavy lift for him.
I think that’s why you’re hearing so much about the preparation for Vice President Harris because this isn’t something she does very often, and I think she has a lot to get ready for, and I don’t think that she’s up to the challenge, in large part not just because I don’t know that she’s a great debater, but she’s so wrong on the issues that Americans care about, and she has a terrible track record to talk about.
Donald Trump has a good story to tell. He shows up at this debate from a position of strength.
She shows up from a position of weakness. The administration that she is totally responsible and accountable for has been an abysmal failure. The economy is bad. Inflation has skyrocketed.
You go to any grocery store or gas station as a family, as an American, you’re feeling the failures of this administration. She doesn’t get to run away from that.
You look at the crisis at the border. They have opened it wide up, allowing millions of people to come in. They don’t know who they are, where they’re going or what they’re coming for.
We actually had taken steps and made significant progress on securing the border under President Trump. We actually had a safer world. We didn’t have conflicts left and right all over the place.
She has to be held responsible for these things. She doesn’t get to run away from ‘em, and I think that’s what makes this debate so difficult for her this week.
KARL: Well, you heard from Liz Cheney and, obviously, she’s not — not alone among prominent Republicans that are — that are supporting Kamala Harris or simply saying that Donald Trump is unfit for office.
How do you square that — that record that you just talked about, which is obviously debatable and will be debated, with what happened at the end of the Trump presidency where, you know, he did try to overturn a presidential election, tried to overturn a democratic election?
SANDERS: I do think she actually is significantly in the minority here. You look across the board, prominent Republicans are supporting President Trump.
But ultimately, I think she’s a non-factor. I’m not trying to be rude, but you don’t get to call yourself a conservative or Republican when you support the most radical nominee that the Democrats have ever put up. That doesn’t make you a conservative. It certainly doesn’t make you a Republican. I think it makes you somebody who wants to protect the establishment.
Frankly, I don’t think this is news. It should come as no shock that Liz Cheney is not supporting the president. But what should come as a shock is that she is trying to call herself a conservative Republican or either one of those two words while supporting somebody who so clearly does not represent conservative principles.
KARL: Well, well, on one specific that she pointed out and others have, too, you know, Donald Trump is talking about, you know, widespread tariffs — tariffs on virtually every that is important into the United States, big tariffs. It’s become almost a centerpiece of his economic message right now.
How is that conservative? I mean, I’ve been covering politics for a long time. Conservatives usually don’t like taxes, don’t like tariffs. Now, Trump is talking about them all the time.
SANDERS: This is a president who uses that as a tool to hold others’ feet to the fire. He wants to make sure that we’re actually making things in America. There’s nothing more conservative than empowering Americans and American companies to build things here versus building them overseas.
We have to quit becoming completely dependent and reliant on people who hate us, people like China, people like Russia, people like Iran. We have a president now who has allowed himself to be completely walked all over, and a vice president who has been right there by his side, allowing other countries to take the lead.
As we move into the next four years in the next administration, we have to decide who do we want to be the world leaders? Do we want it to be the United States or do we want it to be our adversaries like China, like Russia?
Frankly, I don’t want it to be them. I want it to be the United States. And there’s only one person and one president and one administration who’s done that before and will do it again, and it’s Donald Trump.
We certainly cannot count on Vice President Harris to build back American strength when she’s never demonstrated a capability of doing that in the past.
KARL: All right. Well, Sen — Governor Sanders, thank you for joining us on “This Week”. We’ll see all those issues debated out right here on ABC on Tuesday. Thank you for joining us.
SANDERS: Thanks for having me.
