On Sunday (July 31), in an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Arizona’s state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) said he would never vote for former President Donald Trump again.
Discussing his views, Bower told moderator Jonathan Karl, “I’ll never vote for him, but I won’t have to. Because I think America’s tired.”
Bower went on to state that there are “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.”
Bower, who had said previously he would support Trump if the former President faced President Joe Biden, walked back those statements, giving a scathing review of how Trump maintains influence in the GOP.
Calling Trump a”demagogue,” Bower asserted he maintained his hold on the GOP base because of “thuggery and intimidation.”
Bower also seemingly called Trump out of touch with the average American, saying, “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.”
His intense remarks are a far cry from what Bower told the Associate Press in June before he went on to testify in the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s public hearings.
At that time, he said he would support Trump if he was the Republican nominee in 2024 and was up against Biden.
“I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was,” Bower said in June.
