Rachel Maddow's Once-Unthinkable Attendance at Dick Cheney's Funeral Exposes What the 'DC/NYC Regime' Is All About

The political class in Washington couldn’t hide its contempt for President Donald J. Trump during Thursday’s funeral for former Vice President Dick Cheney — and one photograph captured the entire Beltway mentality in a single frame.

In what was billed as a solemn memorial for a man who shaped the GOP of the early 2000s, the ceremony instead revealed the cozy alliance between Democrats, their media allies, and Republican relics who have long since abandoned the party’s voters. Their shared bond? A seething hatred for the president who has reshaped the Republican Party — and the country — in his second term.

Among the attendees was MSNBC figurehead Rachel Maddow — now front-and-center in the network’s rebrand as “MS NOW.” Maddow built much of her national profile on relentless attacks against Cheney and the Bush administration. Yet there she was, photographed looking visibly displeased, as if the scent of Trump-era populism had drifted into the cathedral.

On Maddow’s right sat Dr. Anthony Fauci, the career bureaucrat and former NIH official whose disastrous COVID-era leadership cratered public trust in federal health agencies. On her left was former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, a remnant of the Bush-era GOP that defined itself by foreign interventions and Beltway appeasement. Next to Mehlman was James Carville, the Democratic operative who helped usher Bill and Hillary Clinton into national power.

Mehlman’s presence made sense. Fauci’s was unsurprising for a consummate insider. But Maddow and Carville — whose careers were built on vilifying Cheney — suddenly presenting themselves as mourners? That took the theater of Washington hypocrisy to new heights.

As Molly Hemingway, conservative journalist and editor of The Federalist, put it: “Can’t imagine a more accurate picture of what the DC/NYC regime is like.”

For decades, Maddow treated Cheney as the embodiment of everything she despised about Republican leadership. Cheney was the left’s political villain of the early 2000s — second only to President George W. Bush. That hatred endured long after he left office. In 2018, Hollywood turned him into a caricature for the black-comedy biopic Vice, starring Christian Bale. When Bale won a Golden Globe, he sneered in his acceptance speech: “Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.”

That was the left’s portrait of Cheney. Dick Cheney didn’t change. The left didn’t change. What changed was President Donald Trump — whose rise sent every entrenched faction of the Washington establishment spiraling into a shared panic.

No part of that establishment reacted more bitterly than Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney. Once the representative for Wyoming, she chose to join Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee — a panel engineered specifically to frame Trump for the Capitol unrest. Cheney was one of only two Republicans willing to participate in that political show trial.

For her service to the Democrats’ narrative, she received an 11th-hour pardon on Jan. 20 from outgoing President Joe Biden, extending to every member and staffer of the committee. Wyoming voters delivered their own verdict soon after, voting her out of office by a landslide.

Dick Cheney himself completed the political transformation when, in October 2024, he openly endorsed then–Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Naturally, Harris was present at his funeral. President Trump was not invited. The guest list told the whole story — a curated roll call of the ruling class, united by contempt for the outsider who now occupies the Oval Office.

Two decades ago, the idea of Cheney endorsing a Democrat would have been laughable. A decade ago, the notion of Maddow attending his funeral would have been deployed as a dark joke: “She was making sure he was dead.” Yet here they were — side by side — linked by a singular political obsession.

Because in Washington, where the permanent political class views Trump as an existential threat to its power, the old rule applies: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Thursday’s gathering wasn’t about mourning a statesman. It was a symbolic display of the Beltway’s deepest fear — that despite their coordinated opposition, President Trump continues to upend the swamp, and tens of millions of Americans stand with him.