“He sounds like a liberal Democrat to me, Bret. He’s wrong, and he’s I think, deliberately promoting those views in order to advance his political interests," Cheney said. | Getty Cheney: Trump 'sounds like a liberal Democrat'

Former Vice President Dick Cheney blasted Donald Trump as sounding like a "liberal Democrat" on Monday evening, as the Republican presidential candidate continued to defend and expand upon his attacks of George W. Bush's administration and its failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

Appearing on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier," Cheney listened to the anchor read a list of the candidate's recent comments about Bush and 9/11 earlier in the day and during Saturday night's debate, including Trump's assertion that Bush and Cheney "lied" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as an impetus to invade the country in 2003.


“He sounds like a liberal Democrat to me, Bret. He’s wrong, and he’s I think, deliberately promoting those views in order to advance his political interests," Cheney responded. "The question of WMD charge that the administration lied, that was thoroughly investigated by the Robb-Silberman Commission. They found absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that." (That commission, however, was not charged with investigating “the use of intelligence by policymakers,” according to co-chair Laurence Silberman.)

On Trump's statement during the debate and days following that Bush failed to stop the 9/11 attacks, Cheney remarked that there was "no actionable intelligence at that point" and that "there was nothing we could have done and we didn’t have intelligence at that point to suggest other than there was a general kind of a threat."

"The other areas, for example, if you look at what we did in the aftermath of 9/11, we did in fact keep the nation safe for seven and a half years," Cheney said. "The president put in place important programs, terrorist surveillance program, enhanced interrogation techniques. All of those things gave us the information that we needed to act. And we had the tremendous support of the American military. They did a superb job. So for Mr. Trump to suggest that just, in my mind, is way off base. He clearly doesn’t understand or has not spent any time learning the facts about that period."

Trump likened that argument on Monday to saying, "The team scored 19 runs [on us] in the first inning, but after that we played well."

Cheney called Trump's statement and conduct "a disappointment," adding that while he has not endorsed anyone, "it's misleading for him to campaign on that basis.”

“I’ve said I’ll support the nominee of my party," Cheney said. "If he operates the way he’s operating, sounding like a liberal Democrat, I don’t think he’ll get the nomination.”