Trump also mentioned Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently endorsed Kamala Harris alongside his daughter. “I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual,” Trump said.

Some of Trump’s most prominent allies-turned-enemies have been Republicans, and former Republicans, who oppose his foreign policy. As a candidate in 2016, Trump became one of the first national Republicans to express that the Iraq war was a mistake, and he frequently touts the fact that there were no new wars involving the US started while he was in office. Since Trump left office, the GOP has been divided over US support for the war in Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, the war in Gaza.

At the same Thursday event, Trump mocked John Bolton, the former national security advisor who has become a vocal critic of the former president. “If somebody shot down a little, tiny, crappy drone that cost about $15, he’d want to go to war with Russia,” Trump said. “He was great for me though for a period… I took this moron with me and he never said anything, but when Kim Jong Un saw him, he said, ‘Oh shit, I think the guy wants to go to war.'”

Trump’s vice presidential pick has been making similar arguments, and addressing the pushback from the more hawkish representatives of the pre-2016 GOP. In an interview with Joe Rogan published the same day, JD Vance argued that there are three issues on which one is “not allowed to question the establishment”.  These include free trade, immigration, and foreign policy, the latter of which is driven both by politicians’ financial interests and by an enduring belief in “the post World War II American consensus” that the US can “remake the entire world in America’s image”.

Vance, too, criticised the Cheney family for their support for various wars. He suggested Liz Cheney was supporting the war in Ukraine in anticipation of a lucrative job on the board of a defence contractor, and brought up her father’s widely scrutinised relationship with Halliburton, a defence contractor that received federal funding during the Iraq war while Cheney was receiving deferred compensation from the company. “I think they’re much better at rationalising their financial motivation as somehow good,” Vance said.

In Trump’s own camp, there’s been a push for more hawkish foreign policy. He has stated on the campaign trail that his policy is “peace through strength”. He told conservative commentator Ben Shapiro last month that he’s “not an isolationist”, adding, “I helped a lot of countries. I kept countries out of war.” Weeks later, Shapiro claimed that he had privileged knowledge of Trump’s plans for the coming administration, and that Trump would likely bring Mike Pompeo or David Friedman onto his team.

But the distance between Trump and the hawks is apparent, and growing. Nikki Haley, a vocal supporter of US involvement in Israel and Ukraine, has been largely absent from the Trump campaign, and took to television last week to criticise Trump on unrelated issues, saying the campaign’s appeals to young men were “going to make women uncomfortable”.

While the foreign policy realignment has splintered the Republican Party and pushed prominent hawks toward the Democrats, it’s also won over a new type of GOP voter who’s sceptical of foreign entanglements, who helped Trump win midwestern swing states in 2016. With polls showing a tie between Harris and Trump in the final days of the race, the fomer President’s attacks on the hawkish former establishment may be an appeal to those very same pivotal voters.

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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