Former Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey (R) said he can’t support GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump in his latest bid for the White House because of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“When you lose an election and you try to overturn the results so that you can stay in power, you lose me. You lose me at that point,” Toomey said during an interview on CNBC.
Toomey supported Trump in 2016 and 2020. But he voted to convict the former president in the Senate impeachment trial held in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s election. Trump had enflamed the rioters by falsely claiming widespread election fraud and pressured state election officials to fraudulently overturn the results.
Nevertheless, Toomey on Tuesday said he couldn’t bring himself to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House either, claiming that she would enact far-left policies and pass “huge” tax increases.
“I acknowledge that the outcome is a binary situation, but my choice is not,” Toomey said of the November election. “It is an acceptable position for me to say that neither of these candidates can be my choice for president.”
“They will repeal the filibuster, and they will be dragged by their left wing, which clearly is in charge now — and I think Kamala Harris proved that with her vice presidential selection,” he added, referring to Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).
Harris has made efforts to appeal to moderates and Republican voters since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Though she’s expressed support for Biden’s plan to reform the filibuster in order to pass some Democratic priorities, like legislation protecting voting rights and codifying abortion access, she’s also vowed to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet and has shed some of the progressive policy positions she took during her short-lived 2020 Democratic presidential primary run. She’s won the support of several prominent conservatives, including former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and retired federal judge Michael Luttig.
Toomey’s stance on Trump stands in sharp contrast to that of Richard Burr, another former Republican senator who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial. Burr said in July he planned to support Trump in November, since he doesn’t see his past vote to convict as an attempt to disqualify Trump from the presidency.
“It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time,” the former North Carolina senator said of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.