Cheney expanded presidential power. Now Trump is doing the same
32 minutes ago Share Save Anthony Zurcher North America correspondent Share Save
BBC
Dick Cheney, the former vice-president who died on Tuesday, dramatically expanded the powers of the US presidency in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. More than two decades later, Donald Trump is wielding the political levers Cheney constructed as a potent tool to advance his national priorities - even as the two men had nasty personal clashes over the direction of the Republican Party. Cheney's experience in US government stretched back to Richard Nixon's White House, and he honed his theories of presidential powers over decades of experience in the corridors of power in Congress and during multiple Republican administrations. As vice-president during the George W Bush administration, he used the Al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon – the most consequential moment of American national unity and clarity of purpose since the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack of World War Two – to restructure the foundations of executive authority. "Cheney freed Bush to fight the 'war on terror' as he saw fit, driven by a shared belief that the government had to shake off old habits of s
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