Famed Photographer Quits Ford Foundation over Liz Cheney Rejection, Fear of Trump Win

SHARJAH, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES- MARCH 05: U.S. photojournalist and ex presidential photogra
Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty
Wendell Husebo

Famed photographer David Hume Kennerly resigned from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation on Tuesday after it repeatedly rejected his demand for Democrat-allied Liz Cheney to receive the foundation’s top award.

The foundation did so, Kennerly claimed, out of fear of retaliation from former President Donald Trump upon potentially winning reelection. Trump is leading Biden in key swing state and national polling.

Kennerly, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political photographer, alleged that fellow board members prevented Cheney, also a board member, from receiving the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service due to a lack of “guts.”

U.S. photojournalist David Hume Kennerly (L) gives a thumbs-up onstage while holding the award of appreciation given by the Crown Prince, Deputy Ruler of Sharjah and Chairman of the Sharjah Executive Council, His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed bin Sultan Al Qasimi (R) at Xposure last day on March 05, 2024, in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. (Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

Kennerly claimed the trustees rejected Cheney three times and failed to honor Cheney’s alleged “courage, resolve, and integrity,” preferring instead to aid and abet a “menace,” he wrote the foundation:

Those of you who rejected Liz join many ‘good Republicans’ now aiding and abetting our 45th president by ignoring the genuine menace he presents to our country. America is fortunate to have Liz Cheney still out there on the front lines of freedom vigorously defending our Constitution and democratic way of life. But you don’t have her back. In failing to honor Liz’s courage, resolve, and integrity, you are retreating and hunkering down behind a wall of silence.
…
Failing that, I can’t in good conscience stay on the board of an organization representing Gerald R. Ford that doesn’t manifest his kind of guts. It’s now a place whose leadership is cowed by a demagogue creating and promulgating the greatest crisis our country has faced since the Civil War.
During Cheney’s time in Congress, she became a controversial figure after allying herself with House Democrats and the January 6 Committee against Trump.
In the spring of 2021, House Republicans fired Cheney as the GOP House conference chair via a vote of no confidence. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), an ardent supporter of Trump and America first policies, replaced her as chair.

Cheney did not want to lose her powerful position in Republican House leadership. To save her title, Cheney reportedly met “off-the-record” with Fox News board member Paul Ryan to shore up rumors of her ouster. Breitbart News reported that Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of the Bulwark, “recognized the meeting as perhaps Cheney’s last gasp to remain in power.”

Between 2017 to 2020, Cheney’s net worth ballooned from an estimated $7 million to possibly more than $44 million, according to analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics and her most recent financial disclosure forms.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.

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