Sorry (Not Sorry) to This Man, Who Died

In 2019, Keke Palmer gave us a momentary imagining of an America untouched and unaffected by Dick Cheney.

By Lauren Tousignant | November 4, 2025 | 6:46pm

Photo: Getty Images

Early Tuesday morning—the same day New Yorkers cast their ballots for Zohran Mamdani or Andrew Cuomo (or Curtis Sliwa)—Cheney’s family announced that their war-hawk patriarch had died at age 84 due to complications from pneumonia as well as cardiac and vascular disease.

In 100 years, what will Dick Cheney be remembered for? George W. Bush’s puppet master will surely be remembered for renaming “torture” as “enhanced interrogation”; for pushing the unitary executive theory, the dangerous presidential theory that argues if the president does it, then it’s legal, because they’re the president; and for being Donald Rumsfeld’s protégé, who the Atlantic once called “America’s worst secretary of defense. ” And he’ll most definitely be remembered for helping to create Guantanamo Bay; expanding warrant-free government surveillance; and for launching the U.S. into a $700 billion war that killed an estimated 200,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,492 U.S. servicemembers.

Most Popular

But the most powerful vice president in U.S. history was also a meme—a meme that suggests that somewhere in the cosmos, there exists a parallel universe where a one-time oil executive didn’t use a terrorist attack on the U.S. to harness the power of the White House to take us to war to make him and his buddies richer. In this universe, Cheney is just “this man,” whom no one recognizes because he did nothing of significance.

It’s hard not to dream of alternate realities when our current president spent his Tuesday Truth Socialing that anyone not voting for one specific candidate in New York City’s mayoral race is a “self professed JEW HATER” and a “stupid person!!!” But I don’t believe you can talk about Cheney’s legacy without talking about what Keke Palmer gave us.

In 2019, Palmer was shown a photo of Cheney on Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector Test. “I hate to say it, I hope I don’t sound ridiculous, but I don’t know who this man is,” she responded. “Sorry to this man.” With those four words, one of the greatest memes of the 21st century was born. Palmer gave us a momentary imagining of an America blissfully unaffected and untouched by Cheney’s determination to give the president absolute power—and one of the single greatest disses in the English language.

Unfortunately, in the world we do live in, Cheney’s time in the White House paved the way for the Tea Party and, ultimately, Trump and MAGA. As Jacob Weindling at Splinter wrote:

Our world today is consumed by the rank corruption and shambolic nature of the Trump administration, but the Bush administration appointing a former Haliburton CEO as vice president, then invading an oil-rich country and giving Halliburton a $7 billion no-bid contract set the stage for our modern breakdown. There is no President Donald Trump without Vice President and shadow president Dick Cheney.

And because of shadow president Dick Cheney, Bush is now most beloved for his paintings of dogs—because anything he might have done in 2005 still (almost) pales in comparison to everything Trump’s done in the last nine months.

“Dick was a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges,” Bush said in a statement on Tuesday. “I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best.” This is very funny, particularly if you’ve ever watched Adam McKay’s Vice, which is a hilarious and infuriating picture of one of the most calculated and evil political figures in American history.

But Cheney did earn himself half a heaven point for eventually speaking out against Trump. It doesn’t make up for throwing the U.S. into a needless war with a country that had nothing to do with September 11, but Cheney was basically ousted from the Republican party when, in 2022, he called Trump a “coward,” said he lied to his supporters, and used violence to try and “steal the last election.” It’s a strange feeling when the war criminals of your youth become the artists and reluctant moral compasses of your adulthood.

On the topic of Trump, while the White House lowered its flags to half-mast on Tuesday, our current president has yet to make a comment—not even an all-caps, exclamation-point-ridden Truth Social post. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Tuesday’s press briefing that Trump is “aware” of Cheney’s death. This is actually a very “sorry to this man”-coded response. But it’s not as funny when a wannabe authoritarian currently starving millions of Americans while building a $300 million ballroom is making the joke.

Cheney also survived five heart attacks, dropped out of Yale, was an early and rare Republican who supported gay marriage because his daughter was gay, and got away with his every horrific move. Christian Bale won a Golden Globe for portraying Cheney in Vice in 2019, and said he was inspired by Satan.

“Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” Cheney said in an interview with USA Today in 2004. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.” Sorry, I am not sorry for this man.

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.