Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s final political act was also his most admirable. Warning that then-candidate Donald Trump “can never be trusted with power again,” Cheney, a Republican, urged 2024 voters to elect Trump’s Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, as president — a rare example of a prominent political leader placing principle over party.

Yet, while Cheney, who died on Monday, rejected Trump because of his use of “lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him” in 2020, Trump’s second presidency owes a great deal to Cheney himself.

Cheney was one of the primary architects of the imperial powers that Trump now wields as president. He was one of the most influential and powerful advocates of the theory of the “unitary executive,” an expansive theory of presidential power that all six of the Supreme Court’s Republicans now view as gospel. Cheney imagined a presidency that was largely unchecked by Congress and free to act swiftly and even violently. And now, we have the very kind of presidency that Cheney sought throughout his long career.