- Once a supporter of Trump, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said he’d never vote for him again.
- “I certainly don’t trust that authority that he would exercise,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
- Bowers testified in front of the January 6 committee, prompting backlash from his own party.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, backtracked on his previous support of former President Donald Trump on Sunday.
“I’ll never vote for him, but I won’t have to. Because I think America’s tired and there’s some absolutely forceful, qualified, morally defensible and upright people, and that’s what I want. That’s what I want in my party and that’s what I want to see,” Bowers told Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.”
Bowers, once a supporter of Trump, previously told The Associated Press he’d vote for Trump again if he was Biden’s rival, “simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the country.”
Since then he’s testified in front of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, receiving criticism from members of his own party, including the former president.
“I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner,” the Arizona lawmaker told the committee: “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.”
Some Arizona Republicans have been proponents of Trump’s debunked 2020 election fraud claims — even attempting to pass a bill that would allow the state legislature to overturn elections. Bowers thwarted the primarily Republican-backed bill before it became law.
His viewpoint now is that Trump should not hold power in office. “I certainly don’t trust that authority that he would exercise,” Bowers told ABC.
He added: “I have thought, at times, someone born how he was, raised how he was — he has no idea what a hard life is. And what people have to go through in real — in the real world. He has no idea what courage is,” Bowers continued.
Bowers is facing a Trump-endorsed candidate in the state’s August 2 Senate primary.