Tuesday, Rep. Liz Cheney, a fourth-generation Wyomingite, lost her congressional seat in Wyoming to Harriet Hageman, an attorney reviled for her unrelenting attacks on the environment who has, most recently, been seen offering rage-inducing and boggling comments about President Joe Biden.
Although not much is really known about the Republican congressional nominee, she worked for several decades as a trial attorney battling for private interests against environmental policies, The New York Times reports. Fighting against the protection of everything from land to water to endangered species to millions of acres of National Forests, Hageman is a real winner in the era of a planet that, in many regions, is literally burning to the ground.
But in her comments just days ago on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Real America’s Voice, Hageman implied that fentanyl overdoses were Biden’s fault, calling the president “the largest or the most destructive human trafficker in our history." Are you following? Me neither.
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It’s no surprise that Hageman, 59, hates Biden; she was endorsed by former President Trump on Sept. 9, and believes he lost the 2020 election because of fraud.
“We have serious questions about the 2020 election," Hageman said during a debate on June 30. And in a statement sent to Business Insider, Hageman wrote:
"We didn't elect her to Congress to wage her personal war with President Trump. … The people of this state want their only member of Congress to reflect their views and values, and they're going to fire Liz Cheney.”
NPR reports that about 70% of Wyoming voted for Trump in 2020 and that it was Cheney’s unwavering devotion to her position on the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol that infuriated her constituency—and, ultimately, what lost her the seat on Tuesday.
Before announcing her run, it was clear Hageman was going to attack Cheney for voting to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"The people of Wyoming deserve leaders who reflect their views and values, but Liz Cheney betrayed us because of her personal war with President Trump, who won Wyoming by massive majorities twice,” Hageman said.
Hageman’s position on Jan. 6 is clear. She has regularly pivoted away from what she’s called the “J-6 situation” and instead prefers to stump on the “gas crisis” and the cost of food.
Hageman’s no stranger to politics. Her father, Jim Hageman, was a state representative in Wyoming for more than 20 years. In 2018, she ran for governor, finishing third in the primary.
The irony is that Cheney and Hageman are eerily similar. As Insider reports, Cheney voted with Trump 93% of the time while he was in office. Both women agree on protecting oil over the environment, and both oppose the expansion of the government. In fact, Hageman served as an advisor during Cheney’s Senate run in 2014, and Hageman endorsed her congressional bid in 2016. They part ways only when it comes to Trump.
In Cheney’s concession speech, she pledged to do “whatever it takes” to make sure Trump stays out of the White House.
“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the votes. I could easily have done the same again, the path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election,” Cheney said.
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