Liz Cheney's Wyoming GOP Opponents Are 'Armpit Farters': Adam Kinzinger

Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, mocked the Wyoming GOP candidates challenging Representative Liz Cheney after they held a debate hosted by PBS on Thursday.

Cheney and Kinzinger are both staunchly opposed to former President Donald Trump and voted to impeach him following the January 6, 2021, attack by his supporters against the U.S. Capitol. While Kinzinger is not running for reelection, Cheney is facing off in a difficult Republican primary against Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman, as well as three other GOP hopefuls. Polls show Hageman has a significant advantage with Wyoming voters, who largely backed Trump in 2016 and again in 2020.

Kinzinger knocked Cheney's Republican rivals on Twitter, sharing a short edited clip of the debate from the anti-Trump group The Republican Accountability Project.

"This debate really was filled with a bunch of arm-pit farters and then there was Liz Cheney, the only serious person up there," the GOP congressman wrote.

The Republican Accountability Project captioned its video with: "This wasn't SNL on a Thursday night. This was Wyoming's Republican primary debate." The clip was edited to highlight bizarre remarks by Cheney's opponents, as well as moments when they stumbled in the debate.

"If we embrace the lies of Donald Trump, if we tell the people of Wyoming something that is not true, we will soon find ourselves without the structure and the basis and the framework of our constitutional republic," Cheney said in her closing statement on Thursday evening.

During the debate, the incumbent Wyoming representative also challenged her Trump-endorsed rival, Hageman, on the former president's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

"She knows it wasn't stolen. I think that she can't say it wasn't stolen because she's completely beholden to Donald Trump and if she says it wasn't stolen he won't support her," Cheney said. Although Hageman did not go so far as to claim the 2020 election was "stolen," she said there were "serious concerns" about what had occurred.

"Cheney has abandoned Wyoming and is only concerned about her own personal war with President Trump, yet she is still trying to cling to power," Hageman's campaign said in a press statement after the debate.

Tim Murtaugh, an adviser to the Hageman campaign and a former Trump campaign official, dismissed Kinzinger's criticism in an email to Newsweek. "Harriet Hageman is the next congresswoman from Wyoming and we wish Mr. Kinzinger well on his retirement," Murtaugh wrote.

Newsweek reached out to the three other Republican contenders for comment.

The debate came as Cheney has been leading hearings of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack against the U.S. Capitol. The Wyoming Republican serves as the vice chair of the committee, while Kinzinger is the only other GOP lawmaker on the commission.

Cheney has been consistent in her condemnation of Trump. During the first hearing of the select committee in June, the Wyoming congresswoman called out fellow Republicans as well.

"There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain," she said.

On Wednesday, Cheney spoke at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, for a series presented by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute.

"I know at this moment we are confronting a domestic threat we have never faced before and that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic, and he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man," the GOP representative warned.

Updated 7/1/22 at 1:21 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Hageman's campaign.