Harriet Hageman said Trump was 'very sweet' when they talked after she beat Liz Cheney in Wyoming

• Harriet Hageman defeated Trump nemesis Liz Cheney in Wyoming.
• Hageman attributed her victory to her focus on the state, and cast Cheney as an outsider.

Former President Donald Trump was "really happy" after Harriet Hageman defeated his nemesis, Rep. Liz Cheney, in a landslide victory in Wyoming, the soon-to-be congresswoman revealed this week.

Hageman told Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York in his podcast "The Byron York Show" that she last spoke with Trump the day after the August 16 primary election.

"He was really happy, and he was fun, he was happy," Hageman, a local natural resources attorney and former Republican National Committeewoman, said in an interview posted Friday. "He's always quite gregarious. He's got a very funny sense of humor, which I appreciate. He was very complementary he liked the race that we ran."

"He was just very nice," she added. "He's always very sweet when I talk to him"

Unseating Cheney from Wyoming's sole US House seat became a top goal for Trump after Cheney voted to impeach him over the January 6 Capitol siege. Cheney remained a fierce critic of the former president, even serving as a top Republican on the Democratic-appointed January 6 Committee investigating the attack.

The race in Wyoming was largely seen as a test of the party's future, in battle between the GOP's traditional conservatives and its MAGA faction. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, voted with Trump 93% of the time when he was president and sides with Republicans on major policy issues.

But Hageman said she defeated Cheney seat because she ran on her vision for the Wyoming. She also said she spent more time in Wyoming than Cheney, whom she dismissed as someone who "simply abandoned Wyoming" and "lives in McLean, Virginia," a wealthy suburb outside of Washington, DC.

The primary campaign, Hageman said, exposed that Cheney "had used Wyoming for the last six years as a mechanism to get power."

"I have been fighting for Wyoming," Hageman said. "I wasn't just running against Liz Cheney, which I think is what some people especially back in DC may think. I was running for Wyoming I was running to address the issues that are important to us."

Hageman said her campaign traversed 40,000 miles around the Cowboy State, holding more than 200 public events and town halls.

Leading up to the primary, Cheney largely framed her race to keep her seat as an existential battle over her party and the fight to protect democracy.

Hageman indicated she thought the approach was a mistake, saying that in contrast she sees Wyoming as "key to prosperity" for the US.

"We are the ones that put food on your table, gas in your car, a roof over your head and we pave your highways," she said.

Hageman wants another Trump presidency

Hageman once was an anti-Trumper and Cheney ally, but fully embraced Trump during her primary, including on his election denial rhetoric.

"Absolutely the election was rigged," Hageman said in early August during a campaign stop in Casper. "It was rigged to make sure that President Trump could not get reelected."

She made similar remarks in the York podcast, saying people have "legitimate concerns" about the 2020 election, though she added President Joe Biden is "our president."

"That's life," she said. "We have largely gone on from that."

Hageman said that if Republicans win a House majority in November then they should release all the video footage from January 6, saying "everything that happened that day should be out in the open."

She cited security failures at the Capitol as an example of what should be released, though she did not say the investigations should focus on Trump's role — as the Democratic-led hearings she called "horrifically tainted" have done up to this point. Anyone who breached the Capitol and committed a crime should be prosecuted, she said.

"I'm all for investigating it," she said. "I'm all for finding out what happened January 6. I'm all for finding out what the failures were. I'm all for finding out who all was involved."

Asked by York whether she'd like to see another Trump presidency, Hageman replied that she would, and that she would support him if he should choose to run. Trump continues to hint that he'll seek the White House again, but has yet to make any formal announcements.

"I miss President Trump, so yes," Hageman said. "I think we all miss President Trump. His policies were really incredible for the United states and they were especially incredible for Wyoming."