Melissa Harris-Perry: Dick Cheney’s Book Is Revisionist

Melissa Harris-Perry: Dick Cheney’s Book Is Revisionist

Melissa Harris-Perry: Dick Cheney’s Book Is Revisionist

Cheney has a somewhat deluded sense of recent history.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Dick Cheney’s new memoir, In My Time, leaves a lot to be criticized, and as a result, he’s using his promotional book tour as an opportunity to defend it—the former vice president even told Matt Lauer on The Today Show that the Iraq War hasn’t damaged America’s global reputation. Nation columnist Melissa Harris-Perry appeared on MSNBC to share her thoughts on Cheney’s somewhat-deluded sense of recent history.

"Certainly there’s an unwillingness to take responsibility for the problems that occurred," Harris-Perry said. "Those things somehow get written off of the Bush-Cheney legacy. But now things that have occurred three year’s into President Obama’s administration, he’s now taking credit for." In the book, Cheney also takes shots at Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, misrepresenting the circumstances surrounding Powell’s resignation. "I do find  it appalling, and obviously revisionist," Harris-Perry said.

—Carrie Battan

Disobey authoritarians, support The Nation

Over the past year you’ve read Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky take on the Trump family’s corruption, set the record straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Healthy Again movement, survey the fallout and human cost of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Court’s dangerous antidemocratic rulings, and amplify successful tactics of resistance on the streets and in Congress.

We publish these stories because when members of our communities are being abducted, household debt is climbing, and AI data centers are causing water and electricity shortages, we have a duty as journalists to do all we can to inform the public.

In 2026, our aim is to do more than ever before—but we need your support to make that happen. 

Through December 31, a generous donor will match all donations up to $75,000. That means that your contribution will be doubled, dollar for dollar. If we hit the full match, we’ll be starting 2026 with $150,000 to invest in the stories that impact real people’s lives—the kinds of stories that billionaire-owned, corporate-backed outlets aren’t covering. 

With your support, our team will publish major stories that the president and his allies won’t want you to read. We’ll cover the emerging military-tech industrial complex and matters of war, peace, and surveillance, as well as the affordability crisis, hunger, housing, healthcare, the environment, attacks on reproductive rights, and much more. At the same time, we’ll imagine alternatives to Trumpian rule and uplift efforts to create a better world, here and now. 

While your gift has twice the impact, I’m asking you to support The Nation with a donation today. You’ll empower the journalists, editors, and fact-checkers best equipped to hold this authoritarian administration to account. 

I hope you won’t miss this moment—donate to The Nation today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel 

Editor and publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x