Donald Trump Predicts Media Will 'Play It Down' if Liz Cheney Loses Primary

Former President Donald Trump is predicting that the media won't focus on Representative Liz Cheney's House race if she is unseated tonight by his endorsed candidate Harriet Hageman.

"If Liz Cheney loses tonight, the Fake News Media will do everything within their power to play it down and pretend that it was not a referendum on the Unselects - That it was no big deal," Trump wrote Tuesday afternoon on his social media platform Truth Social. "Actually, it would be a very big deal, one of the biggest!"

Cheney, a vocal critic of the former president since the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, is up against a formidable reelection this year. Seeking recrimination for her vote to have him impeached after the riot, Trump has made clear his wishes to have Cheney ousted from her seat representing Wyoming's at-large district. The former president's efforts look increasingly likely to produce positive results as polls show Cheney poised to lose Tuesday's Republican primary to Hageman.

Cheney joined Congress the same month that Trump was inaugurated into the White House, and while her voting record shows her to have voted with the former president about 93 percent of the time during his time in office, the three-term congresswoman emerged as his harshest Republican critic just weeks before he left the Oval Office and has since become the vice chair of the House committee investigating January 6.

Cheney and Trump have publicly feuded in the last year and a half, a clash that prompted Trump to launch a full-throated endorsement for Cheney's GOP opponent despite Hageman's history of being a former "Never-Trumper."

Hageman, a former adviser to Cheney, had previously called Trump "the weakest candidate" as well as "racist and xenophobic" during his 2016 presidential campaign. However, since launching her congressional bid, Hageman has embraced the former president with enthusiasm after claiming she was misled by "lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney's friends in the media" told about him.

Cheney has fallen within GOP ranks since breaking from the party to vote in favor of Trump's impeachment in January 2021. Last year, she was ousted from her position as the No. 3 Republican in the House—replaced by Representative Elise Stefanik—and was censured by the Republican National Committee.

"Warmongering and despicable human being Liz Cheney, who is hated by the great people of Wyoming (down 35!), keeps saying, over and over again, that HER Fake Unselect Committee may recommend CRIMINAL CHARGES against a President of the United States who got more votes than any sitting President in history," Trump wrote on social media last month.

Trump's attacks on Cheney's reelection campaign have not gone unmatched. Cheney convinced her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to cut an ad against her Republican nemesis—a move that drew criticisms alleging hypocrisy for calling Trump the biggest "threat" in U.S. history.

Speaking to ABC last month, the congresswoman made her stance clear, saying that "the single most important thing is protecting the nation from Donald Trump."

Cheney's allies have urged Wyoming Democrats and independents to cross party lines and help push her over the finish line, but in a state Trump won with more than two-thirds of the vote in both 2016 and 2020, the last-minute strategy seems unlikely to help with a reelection win.

Newsweek reached out to Cheney's campaign for comment.