‘You'd better listen, he shot a man in the face!’: Dick Cheney shares mask advice, gets mocked & welcomed into #Resistance

Former VP Dick Cheney hit trending status online after appearing in a photo urging the use of face masks, earning praise from the anti-Trump #Resistance as critics recalled his infamous ‘hunting accident’ and lies about Iraqi WMD.

The hawkish ex-vice president was seen in an image shared by his daughter, Liz – a GOP rep from Wyoming – on Friday, declaring “Dick Cheney says WEAR A MASK,” followed by the hashtag “real men wear masks.” The moralizing tweet was quickly met with mockery, many netizens finding it impossible not to mention Cheney’s 2006 hunting mishap, which saw the VP blast Texas attorney Harry Whittington in the face with a shotgun.

While Whittington, then 78-years-old, survived the shooting and both he and Cheney maintain it was an accident, the incident has become something of a legend in popular culture, producing a litany of ‘Dick Cheney will shoot you in the face’ jokes at the time – which were brought back in force on Friday.

In some quarters, Cheney’s mask stunt was met with approval, with a number of netizens insisting anyone who refuses to wear a face covering is “actually a worse human” than the former VP. The GOP-led Lincoln Project, part of a constellation of conservative ‘NeverTrump’ organizations, also welcomed Cheney into the #Resistance, apparently seeing the mask as a political symbol.

Cheney’s detractors soon shot back, however, noting the former VP’s role in launching the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq, which, according to some estimates, consigned over a million Iraqis to death. Deeming Cheney responsible for a “war of aggression, kidnapping, torture and extrajudicial executions,” critics argued the hollow gesture – wearing a piece of fabric over his face – could not absolve “war crimes.”

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