ANALYSIS — It was business as usual Thursday at the White House as a list of American political luminaries and family members gathered across town to remember Dick Cheney, the late former vice president with the aggressive foreign policy that helped spawn the “Make America Great Again” movement.
White House aides chatted and laughed with reporters ahead of a press briefing, and the same aides went about their usual daily tasks. Squirrels sprinted across the North Lawn as heavily armed U.S. Secret Service officers surveyed the scene. Inside, a television reporter said “good morning” to colleagues in an unbuttoned grey overcoat as winter neared in Washington.
The loud banging from President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom construction site rippled across the campus and into the briefing room as not far away, former President George W. Bush, former staff members and family members praised Cheney as a dedicated public servant, avid outdoorsman and devoted family man.
