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CASPER, Wyo. – Since her father’s first victory 44 years ago, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and her family have never lost an election in Wyoming. When George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney as his formula mate, the Republican ticket won by about 40 points, twice.
Former President Donald Trump is determined to end this streak this summer, aggressively rallying behind main rival Harriet Hageman, who is betting he could overthrow his most outspoken Republican critic in Congress.
He went out on a weekend in a very different Wyoming than in previous years, where thousands applauded him as he confronted Cheney and rallied what he called the “failed foreign policy of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden.”
Attendees laughed when a combination of photos of the body of the congresswoman and the face of former President George W. Bush appeared on the top screen of the Ford Wyoming Center. “I think it looks good,” Trump joked. “Liz Cheney is the latest on America.”
Trump recalibrates his Republican stance after setbacks in the primaries
The August 16 Wyoming primaries are shaping up as the next big test of Trump’s effort to overthrow Republican elected officials who have been critical of him and fought his lying attempts to overturn the results. of the 2020 elections.
His crusade received a major blow last week in Georgia, where Republican primary voters overwhelmingly renamed Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over candidates the former president strongly supported.
These losses followed an erratic record in previous races that included high-profile defeats of his favorite candidates in Idaho, Nebraska and North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, the candidate that Trump endorsed for the U.S. Senate is on a count. Taken together, the results have raised questions about the party’s influence.
Saturday’s rally in Casper was a moment that the former president and his movement took advantage of to regroup. After failing to oust Republicans in Georgia who had rejected attempts to subvert the election, Trump was heading for a campaign with a better chance of success, due to strong anti-Cheney sentiment in the Republican ranks in Wyoming. .
Cheney, who dropped out of his weekend schedule after developing covid-19, declined to comment on the story. Hageman, a lawyer and former Republican National Committee member who refused to be interviewed, told the crowd in the 8,395-seat arena here that the Wyoming Conservative was fed up with Republicans “working harder to divert attention. of the failures of the current administration. than them to protect us from this. “
Unlike Georgia, where Kemp and Raffensperger ran more nuanced campaigns to address Trump, Cheney, a three-term congresswoman who has raised more than $ 10 million for her re-election campaign, there has been no apology for opposing the 45th president, even as a local. Republicans have condemned him.
On Friday, in a video posted after running in the primary, Cheney framed the race as a referendum on “the rule of law” and “our founding principles,” leaning on his role on a committee of the House investigating January 6, 2021., attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mafia. The panel, which will hold public hearings in June, questioned and sought information from some of Trump’s closest allies and some of his colleagues who removed her from the Republican leadership role of the third-ranked House of Representatives. until last May.
“I will not hesitate or back down. I will not give in to pressure or intimidation. I know where to draw the line and I know some things are not for sale,” Cheney said. “What we’re doing in this election in Wyoming is important.”
Wyoming Republican activists have taken multiple steps to reject and try to discredit Cheney. After she joined nine more House Republicans to oust Trump after the Capitol insurrection, the state party voted to censor her. In November, she voted not to recognize her as the party’s candidate for Congress. Trump had backed Hageman, who had once worked to block him from the party’s nomination in 2016, two months earlier.
In Casper, Republicans who had come to see Trump, Hageman, and a constellation of invited MAGA stars said they were outraged by Cheney’s actions and agreed with Trump’s criticism of the investigation. January 6 insurrection.
George Clark, 69, a Buffalo, Wyo. Farmer who supported Hageman, said he had contacted Cheney’s office during the investigation and was upset when he received a letter from defend it. “When she votes with the Democrats, not only does it hurt Wyoming, it hurts the whole country,” Clark said. “So Cheney and Trump didn’t get along. She decided to listen to her father. Okay. She’s right for her father, but not for us.”
Trump has spent months trying to persuade Republicans to see things that way, and his supporters have also been looking for ways to make it harder for Cheney to survive the challenge.
A list of Trump’s endorsements in the 2022 Republican primary
The former president and his allies tried unsuccessfully to change voting rules in Wyoming, even through calls from Trump, his advisers, and others to pressure state officials and the Republican governor. Last year, the Republican-controlled state Senate defeated, by a single vote, a bill that would have required a second round of primaries where no candidate got the majority of votes. Trump was outraged by the governor, with whom he had spoken in person, advisers said.
A proposal to close the primaries to pro-independence and Democrats went nowhere. The fear in Trump’s orbit, according to four advisers, is that so many Democrats will change and vote for Cheney that could bring the race closer than people expect.
Here in Casper, Trump told the crowd that Gov. Mark Gordon was greeted when he landed and reprimanded Gordon for offering him a hat instead of the election changes he had called for. “I’d rather not have a hat,” Trump said. “I’d rather Democrats not vote in Republican primaries.”
Hageman’s campaign expressed confidence that cross-voting would not be enough to save Cheney, although they said they felt finding them was clearly part of their strategy. Cheney’s campaign has worked to divide pro-Trump voters among the various challenges he faces, renting a billboard near the rally with Hageman’s 2016 quotes attacking Trump as “xenophobic” and unfit for leadership. the match. That, Hageman spokesman Tim Murtaugh argued, was a “media game” that would not win votes. Several Republicans, including state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, have defied calls to quit the race.
The Hageman campaign is led by a group of Trump allies, including Murtaugh, Bill Stepien, Nick Trainor and Justin Clark. In a recent interview, Trump boasted of his ability to defeat Cheney and said that “the people of Wyoming can’t stand her.”
Advisers said the former president often stripped the congresswoman, often enraged by her family. Defeating her, they say, has been her top priority, as she endorses the 2022 cycle. And in the interview, Trump suggested in vain that Cheney might not run for re-election, though he did. . “If someone is at a low level and hasn’t shown up, I wonder why,” he said. “She’s 15 percent.”
A poll released Friday by the pro-Hageman Club for Growth put the rival far ahead of Cheney, with only a quarter of Republican voters in favor of the MP. This was a stronger position than the one endorsed by Trump-backed candidates in Georgia and some other states before this year’s primary defeats.
Several other candidates Trump has campaigned for elsewhere, including Nebraska Gov. Charles Herbster and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (RNC), had fallen in the polls and financially opposed Republican establishment figures their states.
Trump advisers said he was angry over the defeat of former senator David Perdue, who lost to Kemp in Georgia, and MP Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Who was defeated by Raffensperger. Trump had seen them as a disgrace and saw Perdue as lazy, advisers said who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions.
In Casper, Trump barely mentioned the losses, except to blame the media for not covering his overall record of primary victories, where he has largely backed the safe headlines. He also denounced the cross-voting in Georgia, where all voters can choose which primary they want to vote for, from Democrats who opposed Perdue and Hice.
In the interview, Trump boasted how many pro-impeachment Republicans had already been forced to step down, and described his brand in the Republican Party as “better than ever.” Four of the 10 House Republicans who voted to oust Trump in January 2021 have opted to step down.
The Trump team has repeatedly noted its enduring popularity among Republicans in Wyoming and elsewhere. In Casper, the crowd easily set a record for the largest political rally in the country’s least populous state. Attendees wore Trump gear from their past campaigns, and hats and T-shirts that assumed a 2024 campaign was inevitable. Hundreds carried merchandise with the phrase “Ultra MAGA,” a term recently coined by Democratic strategists as a derogatory label that was adopted almost immediately by Trump supporters.
“Hello, Ultra MAGA-ers!” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), one of several pro-Trump Republicans who flew to Casper for the rally. Republican candidates from Utah and Colorado also took the walk, trying to have time to face Trump and his allies. Among them was Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, who is seen as a potential Republican rival of Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in 2024.
“We need freedom fighters in Congress,” Biggs said. “We will lay the groundwork for the return of our President, President Donald Trump, to the White House.”
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