ARIZONA SPEAKER OF THE STATE HOUSE RUSTY BOWERS: In the end he would still bow-down to Trump "for all the good he has done"

That's how the conscience of Mesa Conservative Republican works with scripted double-talk out of both sides of his mouth.

In May 2022, Bowers was one of five recipients of the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage award. But on Monday, he said he would still vote for Trump.

‘I’d vote for him again’: Bowers backs Trump despite denouncing ‘big lie’

[Image credit: Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, testified that the effects of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election were ‘horrendous’.Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA]

 

Martin Pengelly

the Guardian |

"Arizona Republican’s comments come after January 6 hearing testimony that the effects of Trump’s actions were ‘horrendous’

Rusty Bowers, the Arizona Republican House speaker who made national headlines describing his refusal to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election, has said he will vote for Trump again if he runs for president in 2024.“If he is the nominee, if he was up against [Joe] Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers told the Associated Press. “Simply because what he did the first time, before Covid, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”

The statement, made on Monday, read jarringly in light of testimony Bowers delivered before the January 6 committee in Washington on Tuesday.

But it echoed comments from other Republicans, the former attorney general William Barr prominent among them, who have said they will still support Trump even after denouncing his attempt to subvert US democracy in service of his lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Biden.

Bowers told the AP: “I supported him, I walked for him, I campaigned with him. But I wouldn’t do anything illegal for him.”

He said the effects of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, including the deadly US Capitol attack, were “horrendous”, adding: “The result of throwing the pebble in the pond – the reverberations across the pond, have, I think, been very destructive.”

He also said he did not share many Republicans’ opposition to the January 6 hearings, which he said were “illuminat[ing] something we need to see big time … and I hope it would sober us”.

On Tuesday, shortly before Bowers testified, Trump issued a statement in which he abused the Arizonan and claimed: “You told me the election was rigged and that I won Arizona.”

Bowers testified that he did speak to Trump after the election, but if “anyone, anytime has said that I said the election was rigged, that would not be true”.

Asked if he told Trump he won Arizona, Bowers said: “That is also false.”

He described pressure from Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies and the toll it took.

Reading from a journal he kept at the time, he said: “It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor. . .“I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions but I … do not want to win by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived desertion or deflection of my deep foundational desire to follow God’s will.”