SECOND THOUGHTS

Arizona House Speaker Boss Rusty Bowers Calls Trump ‘Tyrannical’ After Saying He’d Vote for Him in 2024

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers was previously supportive of the former president for 2024, despite testifying that he’d illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election.

The Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives has tried to backpedal on his eyebrow-raising support for Donald Trump by calling the former president “tyrannical.” Russell “Rusty” Bowers testified live on national TV to the Jan. 6 committee that the former president had pressured him to help illegally overturn the 2020 election—though Bowers insisted later in an interview with the Associated Press that he would nevertheless vote for Trump again in 2024 if he was the nominee. “Any intimation that I have some overriding, some powerful support for Mr. Trump just would be false,” Bowers told Business Insider last week. “I’m looking for a good candidate. And I hope we can certainly provide one, otherwise it’s just going to be a hard thing.” Bowers added: “I think much of what [Trump] has done has been tyrannical, especially of late.”