Liz Cheney Suggests Obama Honored Fallen Soldiers For The Publicity

Former State Dept. Official Liz Cheney
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Liz Cheney called out President Obama for his early-morning trip to honor fallen soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base yesterday, suggesting President Bush honored America’s heroes with a bit more class than his successor.

Cheney, on Fox News Radio’s John Gibson Show yesterday:

“I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don’t understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That’s really hard for me to get my head around…It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this.”

It’s not clear exactly what Cheney is referring to when she says, “Bush used to do it without the cameras.”

It’s true that Bush’s Pentagon continued a long-standing policy of banning cameras at Dover when the nation’s fallen arrived in flag-draped caskets from foreign battlefields. (Upon taking office, Obama lifted the ban.)

So that covers “without the cameras.”

But as CBS’s Mark Knoller reported yesterday, Obama was the first president to visit arriving dead at Dover during the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq — meaning that when it came to taking trips to Dover like Obama did yesterday morning, Bush never used to “do it” at all.

Here’s the audio of Cheney (h/t Gateway Pundit):

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