Former President Donald Trump came for Arizona Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers with a vicious attack on Monday, but he used a sneaky insult that was more funny than scathing.
Trump said Bowers was “rusty” (get it?) and “weak” and “wrong about everything” in a dig at Truth Social.
Trump then explained: “He’s rusty, like steel rusts and weakens.”
Screenshot/Truth Social/Donald Trump
He was responding when Bowers blasted Trump in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, saying he would never vote for him again and that Trump “has no idea what courage is.”
Bowers, a lifelong Republican and onetime staunch Trump supporter, testified forcefully in June against the former president in televised hearings before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Bowers recounted how Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told him to throw out electoral votes for Joe Biden, who won the state’s presidential election, because “200,000 illegal immigrants” and more than 5,000 “dead people” had voted in the 2020 election in the state. Arizona. But despite his repeated requests, Bowers said Giuliani never gave him a single fraudulent voter name.
There was no evidence “that would tell me, ‘You have a doubt.’ Deny your oath.’ I’m not going to do that,” said Bowers, who said the Constitution is “God-inspired.” He told the House panel: “I don’t want to be a winner by cheating.”
Trump in his post on Monday criticized Bowers’ “measurement” as “passionate.” Bowers is not counting votes in his state.
When pressed by a reporter after the Jan. 6 deposition, Bowers reluctantly said he would they still vote Trump if he were the GOP presidential nominee.
But that has changed now.
“I will never vote for him, but I won’t have to,” Bowers said. “Because I think America is tired, and there are some absolutely dynamic, capable, morally upstanding, upstanding people, and that’s what I want.”
He called Trump a “demagogue” which maintains faith through “Trespassing and intimidation.”
“I’ve thought, at times, that someone was born the way they were, raised the way they were – they have no idea what a hard life is,” Bowers said. “And what people have to go through… in the real world. He has no idea what courage is.”
After his testimony, Bowers was criticized by his own party. He faces a tough primary challenge from Trump-backed former state Sen. David Farnsworth in his bid to join the state Senate after serving his term limit in the state House.
