Anti-Trump plotter now his choice to try to oust Cheney
Former President Donald Trump is leading an all-out war against Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming because of her perceived lack of loyalty: After voting to impeach him, she became the voice of Republican opposition to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But his choice to replace her, Harriet Hageman, was not always a loyal soldier herself. She was part of the final Republican resistance to his ascent in 2016, backing doomed procedural measures at the party’s national convention aimed at stripping him of the presidential nomination he had clinched two months earlier.
Hageman worked with fellow supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in a failed effort to force a vote on the convention floor between Trump and Cruz, regardless of the results of the primaries and caucuses held across America. Calling Trump “the weakest candidate,” Hageman attributed his rise to Democrats who she claimed had voted in Republican primaries.
She condemned Trump as a bigoted candidate who would repel voters Republicans needed to win a national election, warning that the GOP would be saddled with “somebody who is racist and xenophobic.”
Hageman’s yearslong journey from Never-Trumpism to declaring him the best president of her lifetime is one of the most striking illustrations yet of the political elasticity demonstrated both by ambitious Republicans in the Trump era and by the former president himself, who has relentlessly asserted his dominance over leaders of his party.
Hageman is hardly the only Republican to vigorously oppose Trump and later back him when it proved politically advantageous. Cruz and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with Kenneth Cuccinelli, who led the 2016 rebellion at the convention, all became enthusiastic Trump supporters.
None of them, however, have quite achieved Hageman’s remarkable political transformation, which has not been previously reported. Five years ago, she was a passionate opponent of Trump who tried to stop him outside the normal electoral process; now, she is his champion in the Republican Party’s marquee showdown over fealty to the former president.
Cheney’s vocal opposition to Trump has turned what might otherwise be a sleepy contest for a safely Republican Wyoming congressional seat into a highprofile test case of the former president’s dominance over the party. His obsession with removing Cheney from office — he has derided her in at least 16 statements since March, including one Thursday that contained a doctored photo combining her hair, body and eyeglasses with former President George W. Bush’s face — has overshadowed nearly all his other political efforts, aside from vying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“It’s going to be the most important House race in the country in 2022,” Cheney said during a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday. “It will be one where people do have the opportunity to say, ‘We want to stand for the Constitution.’ ”
For Hageman, joining forces with Trump to attack an old ally — the two Wyoming women were once so close that Hageman served as an adviser to Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign — presents an opportunity to accomplish something she has been unable to do without him: win a statewide race in Wyoming.
Hageman has never spoken about her effort to block Trump from the 2016 nomination. In a statement to the New York Times, she drew a tenuous connection between her actions and Cheney.
“I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly realized that their allegations against President Trump were untrue,” Hageman said. “He was the greatest president of my lifetime, and I am proud to have been able to renominate him in 2020. And I’m proud to strongly support him today.”
Cheney, who declined to comment or be interviewed for this article, supported Trump’s 2016 campaign. She endorsed him that May and, in October, issued a statement reiterating her support after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump bragged about groping women.