Even amid shifting intra-party dynamics within the GOP, Harriet Hageman believes that Republican voters throughout deep-red Wyoming are firmly united against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the embattled political scion who has positioned herself as the leading exponent of anti-Trump conservatism in the House.

Hageman, a longtime trial attorney and GOP activist in Cheyenne, describes encountering a deep and growing well of anti-Cheney sentiment as she embarks on a bid to unseat Wyoming’s lone congresswoman. “Liz Cheney is not liked in Wyoming,” Hageman, 59, charged in an interview with Jewish Insider on Friday, arguing that the congresswoman has been absent from the state in recent months. “That’s why she doesn’t come to Wyoming.”

For her part, Hageman — who resigned from her position as a national Republican committeewoman days before entering the race in September — seems unusually confident about her prospects. The first-time congressional candidate has reason for optimism thanks in large part to an endorsement from Cheney’s chief adversary, former President Donald Trump, who performed well among Wyomingites in the 2020 presidential election, garnering nearly 70% of the vote. He maintains strong support throughout the state.

Hageman is no doubt banking on that goodwill as a leading foot soldier in the former president’s effort to enact vengeance against the 10 House Republicans, including Cheney, who voted for his impeachment last January following the deadly riot at the Capitol. With just under a year until the primary, the Cowboy State showdown is emerging as a high-profile battle in an ongoing clash between establishment Republicans and Trump loyalists that has only intensified since the election.

In a statement two months ago, Trump lauded his hand-picked challenger as “all in for America First,” while deriding Cheney as a “warmonger and disloyal Republican” as well as the “number one provider of sound bites” for Democrats.

“Here’s a sound bite for you,” Cheney shot back in a sharply worded Twitter message: “Bring it.”

The three-term congresswoman insists she has no intention of stepping aside, as two of Trump’s top targets, Reps. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), have announced in recent weeks. Stripped of her House leadership status and censured by the Wyoming GOP over her impeachment vote, Cheney, 55, has made clear she is standing her ground. The congresswoman now serves as vice chair on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The power of Trump’s endorsement remains something of an untested proposition since he vacated the White House. Despite his mixed record with two recent special House primaries in Ohio and Texas, the former president has yet to prove his clout in more consequential races with deeper ideological fault lines. Hageman’s showing next August, then, could provide a more meaningful gauge of Trump’s influence as he teases a presidential rematch in 2024.

Harriet Hageman smiles during a gubernatorial debate in Casper, Wyo.

At this early stage, however, the race is difficult to read, with no publicly available polling and endorsements yet to flow in from other national Republican figureheads. The field of challengers is also somewhat divided, which may work to Cheney’s advantage, even if she prevails with just a plurality of the vote. Still, three candidates have dropped out of the race since Trump made his pick, winnowing the field in Hageman’s favor.

Meanwhile, Hageman has struggled to match Cheney’s robust fundraising operation, notwithstanding some donations from major Republican business leaders including Peter Thiel and Timothy Mellon. While Hageman pulled in just over $300,000 in the first three weeks of her candidacy, according to the latest filing from the Federal Election Commission, that number is dwarfed by Cheney’s sizable haul. The congresswoman has raised more than $5 million since January, ending the most recent quarter with $3.7 million in cash on hand. 

Hageman also enters the race with some baggage, both as a former Cheney supporter and as an outspoken Trump critic who once sought to deny him the nomination. 

In a 2016 speech, she described the congresswoman as a “friend” and “proven, courageous, constitutional conservative,” according to footage recently unearthed by CNN. Hageman has donated to Cheney’s previous campaigns and at one point served on her leadership team. 

Hageman and Cheney have longstanding familial ties. More than half a century ago, their fathers — the late James Hageman, a long-serving Republican state legislator in Wyoming, and Dick Cheney, the former vice president who once occupied the same congressional seat now held by his daughter — were Young Republicans together. 

While Hageman said their parents “knew each other” in the 1960s as young conservative activists, she swiftly dismissed the suggestion that her connection with Cheney was in any way more meaningful. “I never met Liz Cheney until 2013,” Hageman told JI, acknowledging that she supported Cheney’s brief Senate bid that year as well as her successful House campaign. But Hageman argued that they have never been close. “There is this idea that Liz Cheney and I have this long-standing relationship,” she scoffed. “The last time I texted with her was in February of 2020.”

Cheney was unavailable to comment for this article but has previously described Hageman’s candidacy as a case of “tragic opportunism.”

An equally likely source of tension is Hageman’s past involvement in a last-ditch maneuver to block Trump’s nomination five years ago at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where she was in attendance as a delegate for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The effort was recently detailed in a New York Times article. But Hageman, who once described Trump as “racist and xenophobic,” according to the Times, claimed that she has been misrepresented.

Either way, Hageman, who actively courted Trump’s endorsement this summer, said the former president is fully supportive of her candidacy. “I can assure you that he’s not worried about this issue of whether I was a Ted Cruz delegate or what The New York Times or CNN may say about what allegedly happened in 2016,” she told JI. “I think that some people want to wig out about the ancient news of five years ago,” she added, “because they think that they might be able to drive a wedge between President Trump and myself or President Trump’s supporters and myself.”

Hageman, a Wyoming native who was raised on a ranch outside Fort Laramie, gained prominence as a land and water resources lawyer with a libertarian conservative bent. In 2018, she ran an aggressive campaign for Wyoming governor but only placed third with about 22% of the vote. During the race, she also failed to secure Trump’s endorsement, which went to Foster Friess, the late Republican donor and businessman. Mark Gordon, who was then the state treasurer, ultimately prevailed.

Hageman argued that Cheney is out of touch with Wyoming voters. As evidence, she noted that Cheney holds no seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, which Hageman views as a dereliction of duty in the sparsely populated state where land and resource issues feature prominently in local policy debates. Cheney, however, has introduced a number of bills addressing such matters in recent months.

Despite her unsparing assessment of the congresswoman, Hageman was still ready to criticize one of Cheney’s biggest enemies in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the far-right conspiracy theorist who earned Trump’s endorsement during her bid for Congress in 2020. In a heated altercation on the House floor last month, Cheney accused Greene of being a “joke,” alluding to past social media comments in which the first-term congresswoman had suggested that California wildfires were caused by a space laser controlled by a Jewish banking family.

In conversation with JI, Hageman claimed to have “just heard about” Greene’s comments, which were made public months ago. Still, she vowed to oppose such rhetoric if elected, even from members of her own party. “If they’re espousing antisemitic views, hold them accountable,” Hageman said. “But I don’t agree with them.”

But Hageman and Cheney are fundamentally divided on the most salient issue in the race: the 2020 election. While Cheney is among the most outspoken critics of Trump’s baseless effort to cast doubt on the election results, Hageman refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost. “What I will say is, I think that there were some serious irregularities, especially in the swing states, and I think we need to get to the bottom of it,” she told JI. “I think we need to make sure that we have the integrity in the elections that we’re entitled to.”

The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jewish Insider: Why are you running?

Harriet Hagemen: There are several reasons why I’m running, and one of them is that, as you know, Wyoming only has one congressional representative, and we really do need to make sure that we get it right. I believe that Wyoming is entitled to a representative that is not only from Wyoming but someone who is effective and is involved with and understands and is willing to fight for the issues that are important to Wyoming. Most of my professional career has been in addressing issues and fighting for issues that are very, very important to Wyoming. I represent farmers and ranchers, municipalities, some of our most important businesses in the state of Wyoming. When I look at what’s going on in Congress, when I look at what has happened with Liz Cheney and where her priorities are, I just do not believe that Wyoming is being well-represented right now. 

Just as an example — I think that this kind of speaks volumes — 48% of our surface estate is owned by the federal government, and 52% of our mineral interest is owned by the federal government. We have an enormous federal footprint in Wyoming. In addition to that, we’re the ninth largest state but we’re the least populated, so water and natural resources are absolutely critical to our future and they’re critical to our jobs and they’re critical to our families. So, historically, our congressional representative has been on the Natural Resource Committee, and Liz Cheney chose not to do that. She’s not on the Natural Resource Committee, and as such, Wyoming is right now not being represented at all on all of the issues related to the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. 

She’s on the Armed Services Committee. Well, that may be a committee that helps Virginia and D.C., but it is not something that benefits Wyoming, and we’re suffering the consequences of it. There was just a bill that came out of the Natural Resource Committee — with no Wyoming representation, by the way — that would substantially increase the taxes on some of our most important natural resources. That’s an example of the problems that you have when you have your congressional representative not keeping their eye on the ball. 

JI: It’s interesting that you addressed natural resources because you’ve mostly seemed to criticize Cheney for her vocal opposition to Trump, who has endorsed you. How much would you say your case for being elected hinges on Cheney’s resistance to Trump as opposed to other more local issues?

Hageman: Well, again, her priorities are not Wyoming’s priorities. For almost the last year, Liz Cheney’s priorities have been feuding with and attacking President Trump. President Trump won the state of Wyoming by over 70%. In fact, he outperformed Liz Cheney last November in terms of our electorate. The people of Wyoming are very, very strong supporters of President Trump for many reasons, including the fact that he kept his promises. He closed the border. He addressed immigration. Energy independence: We are the largest coal producer in the nation and we are the third-largest oil and gas producer in the nation. The natural resource aspect of this, and energy independence, is incredibly important to the state of Wyoming, not just because we’re producers, but at the same time, because of the types of industries that we have. We use a lot of energy as well, our farmers and ranchers, in terms of the diesel that they use in their tractors and what they have to do for their pickups as they check cows and move cattle and fix fences and that sort of thing. So, being energy-independent was very important to the state of Wyoming, and President Trump was largely responsible for that, and I think that President Trump is probably more popular here now than he was even a year ago. 

That is something that’s important from the standpoint of, we sent Liz Cheney to Washington, D.C., to be an ally of President Trump, and she went to Washington, D.C., and began a feud with him, really, starting in November of last year. It’s been a full year. She was one of the first people in Congress to come out and demand that President Trump concede, claiming there weren’t any issues with the election and that Joe Biden was the legitimate president. Right out of the box, she came out against Trump, and then what she has done in relation to the Jan. 6 commission is also something that has people in Wyoming absolutely up in arms. The fact is, she, with nine of her cohorts, in terms of the Republicans and the Democrats, they voted, without due process and without evidence, to impeach President Trump. It went to the Senate, as per our Constitution, and the Senate acquitted him and refused to convict. It’s over. That whole discussion is done. There isn’t a reason to go on about this. It’s over. It’s been decided. That’s the end of the discussion, period. 

But what she has spent the last 10 months on is on the Jan. 6 commission, working very closely with the Democrats, as well as Nancy Pelosi, and what she’s done is she’s given cover for the absolutely disastrous policies of the Biden administration. She is not focusing on the issues that are important to Wyoming. She’s working with the Democrats on the commission. So it’s an important issue. But I also am running because of my own background and leadership. So while I am running against Liz Cheney, I am also running for Wyoming, and because of my background — what I’ve done with the water and natural resource work, with the policy work I’ve done over the years, with my knowledge and information about the regulatory state — I have the skill set to go back to Congress and be an effective congresswoman for the state of Wyoming and for the United States in general. It’s not all just about running against Liz Cheney. I’m also running because I believe that I am the best candidate to go to Congress and fight the battles that need to be fought. 

JI: How do you see your prospects? It’s a somewhat crowded field, which could help Cheney, even if she emerges with just a plurality in the primary. At least so far, Cheney has out-raised you, though it is early.

Hageman: I think my prospects are very, very good. Liz Cheney is not liked in Wyoming, that’s very clear. 

JI: You get that sense on the ground?

Hageman: Oh, absolutely. Liz Cheney is not liked in Wyoming. That’s why she doesn’t come to Wyoming, and if she does come to Wyoming, it’s a matter of meeting with two or three people in somebody’s home here or meeting with four or five people at somebody’s home there. She does not go to any events in Wyoming. She doesn’t go to the football game. She wasn’t at the homecoming parade. She has had no contact with the Republican Party since before January of this year. She has not come to any central committee meetings. She’s not coming to the Reagan Day or Lincoln Day dinners. She’s not attending events in Wyoming because she can’t. People don’t like her. And so, I think the prospect is very, very good. But something else to keep in mind is that when I announced on September 9, both at that time as well as shortly thereafter, there were three gentlemen who dropped out of the race. So really, the field has been pretty well-cleared, and so I don’t see Liz Cheney being able to get 50% of the vote.

JI: It seems like there’s something of a personal dimension to your challenge given that you and Cheney go back a bit and your families were close. 

Hageman: No, that’s not true. That’s not true. My dad and her dad knew each other in the 1960s. They were both in Young Republicans together. But you realize that Dick Cheney was out of Wyoming for a long, long time, right? I never met Liz Cheney until 2013. I didn’t know her. And you probably can detect just a little bit of frustration in my voice with that, because I know there’s a lot of people in the press that, I don’t know if they think that this is a human-interest story or they think that this is a way to try to attack me with this idea that Liz Cheney and I were close. Liz Cheney is a political tourist in Wyoming. She didn’t live here. She came here, and in 2013, she ran against Mike Enzi. She ran essentially as a Tea Party candidate in 2013, and I did support her. I met her at that time, and I supported her during that very short period of time that she was in the race. 

Then she dropped out and I don’t know that I had any further contact with her until she decided in either 2015 or ’16 that she was going to run for Congress. So then, at that time, she asked me to introduce her at the state convention, and I didn’t necessarily like her opponents because of some of the things that they had done as legislators here in Wyoming, and she was definitely a conservative candidate. I agreed to do that, and I supported her, and that’s kind of the end of the story. There is this idea that Liz Cheney and I have this long-standing relationship. The last time I texted with her was in February of 2020, long before any of this stuff happened. So that gives you an idea. Even before all this stuff with President Trump, if I needed to get a hold of Liz Cheney for any reason, I went through her staff like any other constituent did.

JI: What did you text about?

Hageman: I don’t know. I’ve got my phone up to my ear. I don’t know. The last time I spoke to her was in November of 2020. When she came out and said that Donald Trump needed to concede, she got a lot of blowback from that, and so she started calling people in Wyoming and talking to them and texting with people, and I know that because I’ve seen the text that she was sending to other folks who that had supported her in the past, and she was trying to convince them of her position, and I was one of them that she called. I said, “Liz, I disagree with you. There do appear to be irregularities. We have the absolute right to get to the bottom of them, find out what happened here and make sure that we are protecting our elections and our election integrity.” I said, “I don’t see any reason whatsoever why we can’t investigate what was going on.” That was the very last time I ever spoke to her.

JI: Would you acknowledge now that Trump did lose the election and that Biden is the legitimate president?

Hageman: What I will say is, I think that there were some serious irregularities, especially in the swing states, and I think we need to get to the bottom of it, and I think we need to make sure that we have the integrity in the elections that we’re entitled to. There’s been a lot of information that’s come out, even in the last month, as to issues associated with that election. I’m sure that you’re familiar with the Time magazine article from Feb. 4, 2021, that I have in front of me right now. The title of it is “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” and in that article, they describe in great detail what the Zuckerberg Foundation did in order to influence the election in the swing states.

So, when you ask me that question — I know it’s kind of a litmus test for a lot of people with the press — the way I’m going to answer it is to say that there are irregularities, we know there were things that happened in that election that shouldn’t have happened, we need to make sure that they don’t happen again, and we need to protect the integrity of our elections.

JI: Wyoming, as you’ve suggested, is a sparsely populated state. The Jewish population, as of 2020, was 1,150, according to one source. Since launching your campaign, though, have you engaged in any sort of Jewish community outreach, either at the state or national level? And do you expect to get support from Jewish leaders or pro-Israel advocates in this race, even as Liz Cheney has established herself as a pretty outspoken supporter of the Jewish state? Moreover, do you feel as if you and Cheney differ at all on foreign policy?

Hageman: What I would say is that I do believe strongly in protecting the United States’s interests and Israel’s interests. Israel is clearly one of our strongest allies and our best ally in that region of the world. It’s the only democracy in that region of the world. I’ve always been a strong advocate for Israel. It has the absolute right to defend itself, and I can understand the policy decisions that have been made over the years in order to do so. Your question seems to be fairly broad in terms of whether I have the same foreign policy philosophy or platform as Liz Cheney. Well, as far as Israel, perhaps. I would have to look at exactly what she has said in that regard. 

In terms of other things, I think that we need to make sure that if we are going to engage in foreign policy and in any kind of foreign war or anything else, it has to be in the best interest of the United States, and it has always been in the best interest of the United States to protect Israel. I feel very strongly about that. I thought it was fantastic when President Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem. We had many different presidents over the years who said that they were going to do that. He was the first one who did. Obviously the Abraham Accords were a huge step forward. 

It’s interesting. Wyoming became a state in 1890, and in 1990, we had our centennial. All of the different ethnic groups in the state of Wyoming had different rooms or different areas of the Capitol basically laying out their history in the state of Wyoming. I’m basically a Northern European mutt. I’m Irish and Scottish and English and French and German and all of those different things. But there was a room, you know, of Swedish immigrants, and there was a room for Jewish immigrants. We have a long, long history in Wyoming, and in fact, part of our ranch was originally homesteaded by several Jewish families.

JI: I’m wondering what relationships you’ve built, if any, with Jewish leaders in Wyoming, or at the national level, and what conversations you’ve had now that you’re running for Congress. 

Hageman: I haven’t yet. That’s obviously a group of people that I will be reaching out to, just like I will be reaching out to a variety of other groups that I haven’t yet had an opportunity to get in front of and to talk to and to address what their issues were. One of the reasons I related that story from 1990 is that was over 30 years ago, and it really struck me. It was an incredibly beautiful tribute to the many Jewish families that had helped to settle Wyoming and were business owners and ranchers and farmers and store owners and laborers. What they did is they just had this incredibly beautiful photographic history. All of the different various religions as well as ethnic groups had different rooms. They had the biggest room in the Capitol, our Jewish population did, and they had a photo history. They took down all of the artwork, and they put up their photographs everywhere. And they were the old, old photographs, as well as the newer ones. It was just this wonderful 130-year history in Wyoming and all of the contributions they’ve made. And as you can tell, 30 years later, that still sticks with me.

JI: I wanted to ask about Trump’s endorsement. You opposed his candidacy in 2016 and were a part of the effort to deny him the nomination at the Republican convention in Cleveland.

Hageman: Not true, not true. It’s funny, one publication will publish a story, they’ll ask for a quote or a comment, I’ll give it to them, they don’t publish the entire thing, and then the next publication takes a portion of that and pares it down even further to the point where what actually happened is nowhere even close to what was there. I was working with a small group of people during the 2016 Republican National Convention, and there were probably 10 or 12 issues that they were interested in. I had two issues I was interested in. I wanted a rule change to stop crossover voting because that happens in Wyoming very regularly and it affects our elections here. The other one was to reward Republican success. My point on that was — with a state like Wyoming, where we have a Republican governor, our House and Senate are Republican, our federal delegation is all Republican — I wanted to increase the number of delegates that we got to the RNC as compared to some states that are a lot more liberal than Wyoming. Those were the two big issues that I was focusing on. 

When I was asked about the issue of the crossover voting, the point that I was making was that, at the time, there were quite a few Democrats that were coming out and saying they were going to switch parties in the primary to vote for what they said was our weakest candidate, that they were going to support Mr. Trump at that time and try to saddle us with him. And then they would call him names such as that he was, you know, racist and he was xenophobic and he was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, when he became our nominee, the Democrats would then turn around and point at all of us and say, “See, this is who you picked, so all of you are racist and sexist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” You know the litany. 

And so I said, “That’s what they do, and that’s one of the reasons I want to stop the crossover voting.” That’s morphed into this idea that that’s what I was saying. That isn’t what I was saying, number one. Number two, I was a delegate for Ted Cruz, so I supported Ted Cruz at the convention. And keep in mind, when I was identified as a delegate, Ted Cruz was still in the race. I was a Ted Cruz delegate. We had 29 delegates to the RNC, and I think over 25 or 26 of us were Cruz delegates. Ted Cruz did very, very, very well in Wyoming. But number three, I did support President Trump in 2016. Once he was our nominee, I did support him. 

JI: How did you come around to supporting Trump, and had it been a point of tension that you weren’t initially on board with him in the 2016 presidential primary?

Hageman: I’ll answer those questions separately. Number one, election night in November 2016 was one of the greatest nights that I’ve ever had. When I sat there and I watched TV and I watched, like, CNN and MSNBC, and I watched the total devastation for those poor people having to announce that Hillary Clinton lost and Donald Trump won? I mean, I can’t even describe for you how incredible that night was for me and the millions of people across the United States! That was a glorious, glorious night. But here’s the thing about President Trump, and here’s the thing about politicians in general — and now I’m going to be one: Politicians don’t always keep their promises. Politicians can say an awful lot of things, and as soon as they’re elected they don’t do what they said they were going to do. 

For me, it’s a very easy explanation as to why I became a strong supporter of President Trump. So, when I did visit with him, I’m not going to go into all of my conversation with him. It was a private conversation. He was a very delightful man, he was a very gracious man, I enjoyed talking to him. I can assure you that he’s not worried about this issue of whether I was a Ted Cruz delegate or what The New York Times or CNN may say about what allegedly happened in 2016. I don’t know if you know, but I recently wrote a guest column.

JI: In the Casper Star-Tribune?

Hageman: Yeah. I followed the same progression as most Wyomingites with Trump and Cheney, and it’s where I lay out what I did. President Trump sends me notes every once in a while. What he does is he takes something where I was interviewed or like this guest column, and he writes notes across it and sends it back to me. So he wrote on that editorial, “Harriet, this is fantastic. You are doing great, Donald J. Trump.”

JI: Are you expecting that he will campaign for you in Wyoming?

Hageman: I sure hope so. The plan is that he is, and I sure hope that he does. What I’m saying is I think that some people want to wig out about the ancient news of five years ago because they think that they might be able to drive a wedge between President Trump and myself or President Trump’s supporters and myself. What’s happened in the last five years, I think people are worried about a lot more important things than who I was a delegate for the 2016 RNC, number one. Number two, there was an evolution for an awful lot of people across this country in realizing who and what Donald Trump could be, and so I think that a lot of people kind of feel exactly the same way that I did. We didn’t know that he would be the kind of president that he was and that he would understand the Western issues the way that he did. But he sure did, and that’s why he has such strong support in the state of Wyoming, and that’s why I support him. 

JI: Was it your first time speaking with him when you sought his endorsement before you announced your candidacy in September?

Hageman: Yeah. It was nice. I enjoyed visiting with him. I’ve been traveling the country for decades giving a speech called “Regulation Without Representation,” and I’ve been talking about the expansion of the administrative state and what it’s done to our constitutional foundation, what it’s doing to us individually, and what it’s doing in terms of freedom and liberty and the things that I care so much about, whether it’s First Amendment issues or Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, 14th amendment. It’s also the impact on our businesses and our ability to just take care of our families and be everyday good American citizens. And he was the first president in my lifetime that really understood the danger associated with the bureaucracy, the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

JI: Is there anything that you feel you can do in Congress to address the rising incidents of antisemitism we’ve seen across the U.S., whether it’s using the bully pulpit or by other means?

Hageman: I think that is of concern. I think that anytime people are targeted for their religious beliefs or their history or their ethnicity or their race is something that is not right. And you said it, you use your bully pulpit, you expose it, you challenge it, you make clear that it’s absolutely unacceptable, you don’t engage in it yourself, and you make sure that the people who do engage in that kind of behavior are called out. You’re very honest about who’s propagating antisemitism, and you challenge it — I think just making very clear who’s doing it and challenging it and not accepting it. 

JI: On the far left, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have been accused of espousing antisemitic views. But one aspect of the critique of the far right is that Trump awakened some antisemitic impulses in the U.S. that we saw, to cite one big example, at the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, when one of the rioters was wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” shirt. 

Hageman: Who was that person? Do you know who they were?

JI: I don’t have his name on hand. I know it’s publicly available. But I’m not in front of a computer right now, so I can’t look it up.

Hageman: OK, well, I wasn’t at January 6. I wasn’t in Washington, D.C. I want to say that up front. You named two people on the left that clearly have espoused antisemitic views and really are unapologetic in their attitude. We know that. But you don’t name anybody on the right, and that’s the reason I asked that question. You just kind of paint the entire right as, you know, that it’s the right, that this is an issue, that President Trump awakened this antisemitic view on the right. I am a conservative woman in Wyoming, I have a lot of contact with people around the state, and I know a lot of Republicans. I do not know anybody who believes or holds antisemitic views. 

So if you want to tell me a name and you want to say if that person was somebody who was there and was a President Trump supporter, you know, hold him accountable. But don’t paint us as the right, that this is a right issue, because it’s not. It isn’t the way that we feel, and again, I don’t know anybody who takes the attitude. We all condemn things like what Ilhan Omar and those people say. We do. We condemn that. So when you ask that question, I’m perfectly comfortable answering a question if you’ve got a name for me. But my view is everybody’s responsible for their own conduct. It was Thomas Sowell who recently said we’re quickly moving to a society where nobody’s responsible for their own actions, but we’re all responsible for what somebody else said regardless of how long ago.

JI: I’ll give you two names. One, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been accused of propagating antisemitic conspiracy theories, including one about the California wildfires and the Rothschild family. 

Hageman: I just heard about that.

JI: And Paul Gosar, who has appeared at at least one event with Nick Fuentes, who is a Holocaust denier. So those are two, to square it out. I don’t know if you have any comment on them.

Hageman: Hold them accountable. Just like you would Ilhan. If they’re espousing antisemitic views, hold them accountable. But I don’t agree with them. All I’m saying is I get that a lot where “the right does this” or “conservatives do that.” Name names, and then we can address it.