WASHINGTON – Former president Joe Biden will attend Thursday’s memorial service for former vice president Dick Cheney at the Washington National Cathedral, which will feature remarks from another former president, George W. Bush.
A spokeswoman for Biden confirmed his plans to attend. The Democratic president said in a statement after Cheney’s death that the former vice president was “guided by a strong set of conservative values” and that “he believed, as I do, that family is the beginning, middle, and end.”
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The current U.S. president, Donald Trump, and his administration said little about Cheney after his Nov. 3 death following complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. It’s unknown whether Trump, who has had frosty relations with the Cheney family, will attend the funeral, which is by invitation only.
Trump never made a statement on Cheney’s passing and did not issue a presidential proclamation that often accompanies the death of notable figures. The White House did lower its flags to half-staff after his death, which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it did “in accordance with statutory law.”
That was also the rationale conveyed by the White House to congressional leaders earlier this month, when the Capitol was told that it should go by the statute that governs when a flag should be lowered, including for deaths of principal government figures, according to three people familiar with the conversations.
Federal law says when a former vice president dies, then the U.S. flag will fly at half-staff from the day of death until the day of interment.
The implication was that congressional leaders should not wait for a formal proclamation because one would not be coming. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The White House on Wednesday did not respond to a request for comment on why a proclamation was never issued for Cheney, or whether Trump was invited to the funeral. During his reelection campaign last year, Trump regularly criticized Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, who had become one of Trump’s fiercest critics in the Republican Party after his attempts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election. The former vice president, a longtime Republican stalwart, said he would vote for Trump’s opponent, Democrat Kamala Harris, saying last year that Trump can “never be trusted with power again.”
In addition to serving as Bush’s vice president, Cheney was also the defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush and chief of staff for President Gerald Ford. He also served as Wyoming’s lone representative to the House, a seat that was occupied by his daughter, Liz, decades later.
Others delivering tributes at Thursday’s funeral are Cheney’s longtime cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner; former NBC News correspondent Pete Williams, who was Cheney’s spokesman at the Pentagon; Liz Cheney; and the former vice president’s grandchildren.