<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655915516166,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017d-00b6-db7d-abfd-7cb766d10000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655915516166,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017d-00b6-db7d-abfd-7cb766d10000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_55745223", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1036702"} }); ","_id":"00000181-8c41-df44-ad8b-cf6b8b360000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedArizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers plans to vote for former President Donald Trump if he is the nominee in 2024 despite his disparagement of the president’s actions.
During a public hearing Tuesday before the House Jan. 6 committee, Bowers recalled how Trump pressured him to “break his oath” and engage in a “circus” gambit to thwart the election over bogus election fraud claims. Despite the former president’s antics, the state speaker contended that Trump is better than the alternative.
ARIZONA HOUSE SPEAKER WOULD ‘NOT BREAK HIS OATH’ FOR TRUMP ELECTION CLAIMS
“If he is the nominee, if he 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,” Bowers told the Associated Press after the hearing. “In my view, it was great.”
Bowers reiterated his rebuke of Trump supporters peddling debunked claims about a “rigged” election depriving Trump of victory in 2020, underscoring how the claims had undermined public faith in elections.
“I just think it is horrendous. It’s terrible,” Bowers said. “The result of throwing the pebble in the pond, the reverberations across the pond have, I think, been very destructive.”
However, Bowers refrained from heaping criticism on Trump directly during the interview, instead directing his criticism against some of Trump’s supporters. Trump had not treated him in kind.
Before the hearing Tuesday, Trump chastised Bowers as a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, and claimed Bowers had professed his belief that the “election was rigged” to him directly — something Bowers flatly denied during the hearing.
In the aftermath of the election, Trump and his allies, such as lawyer Rudy Giuliani, prodded him to dispatch a new slate of electors from Arizona, claiming that rampant election malfeasance justified such a bold move. But Bowers refused to budge and kept pressing for evidence.
“We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence,” he recalled Giuliani responding to him at one point.
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Bowers rejected those pleas and earned the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for resisting pressure to use his legislative powers to challenge the 2020 election.
Last February, he also blocked legislation that would have granted the Arizona legislature power to overrule election results. His defiance drew blaring protests against him, including near his home at a time when his daughter was “gravely ill.” She has since died.
