Arizona GOP House Speaker Rusty Bowers claims he’d ‘never vote’ for Trump and doesn’t trust his ‘authority’

"I certainly don't trust that authority that he would exercise," Bowers said from his home in Mesa, Arizona. "I'll never vote for him, but I won't have to," he claimed as he hoped other candidates would emerge to be the GOP frontrunner.

According to Deadline, Bowers was once a supporter of Trump's but went on to testify before the January 6 Committee about what he claims Trump said about election fraud.

Bowers testified in June and claimed Trump and his former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, asked him to replace Arizona's electors with ones who would say Trump won the 2020 vote.

Karl asked, "Did you ever consider going along with it?"

"I said, this is new to me. The idea of throwing out the election of the president is like, okay, so what part of Jupiter do I get to land on and colonize?" Bowers replied.

The Arizona Speaker went on, "If we want to base a party and an authority and move people to solve problems, you can't base it on a lie. Ultimately, that falls apart."

ABC News reports that Bowers, whose house position is term-limited, is running for state senate but is likely to lose the Republican primary to Trump-endorsed candidate David Farnsworth. Bowers said, "the demographics of my race are heavily Trump." On July 19, Bowers was censured by the Arizona GOP after his January 6 testimony and, according to Deadline, has drawn the "ire" of the Republican Party.

Bowers said he's been called a "traitor," been threatened with being hanged for treason, and "had people walk up and say, you know, just cold turkey, 'I'm ashamed of you,'"

The Arizona state senate primary will be held on August 2 and will be the first election for a Republican official who testified before the January 6 committee.

On the future of GOP leadership, Bowers said, "I think America's tired and there's 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."

He ended his thoughts on Trump with, "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."