June 22, 2022

Of Course Rusty Bowers Would Vote for Trump Again

The Arizona Republican helped thwart a coup attempt, but he’s making another one more likely.

Rusty Bowers, Arizona House Speaker departs after testifying before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.Chris Kleponis/Sipa USA/AP

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In an effort to unsettle the GOP’s apparently unflappable loyalty to Donald Trump, the January 6 committee has spotlighted a slew of Republican witnesses, many of them self-professed Trump voters, who stood up to the former president as he and his aides attempted to overturn the election.

The problem, though, is that many of those very witnesses seem unwilling to quit Trump themselves. 

Take, for example, Rusty Bowers, the speaker for the Arizona House of Representatives. In the months following the 2020 election, Bowers steadfastly refused to go along with Trump’s diktats to toss out the vote in Arizona on the basis of nonexistent evidence of fraud. During yesterday’s hearing, he was one of the committee’s marquee witnesses, grimly describing the smears and harassment he experienced after refusing to violate the constitution at Trump’s behest. 

“I do not want to be a winner by cheating,” Bowers said. “I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.” 

Nevertheless, Bowers told the Associated Press on Monday, he’d still vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election if he were once again the GOP standard-bearer.

“If (Trump) is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”

By affirming that he’d still support Trump over Biden, Bowers joined the likes of former Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, both of whom have repeatedly condemned Trump’s election lies and coup attempt—only to state that they’d still support him in a general election.

Bowers may have upheld his oath after the 2020 election. He may have agreed to testify live before the January 6 committee. But if people like him maintain their willingness to back Trump in the face of clear and convincing evidence that he poses an unprecedented threat to democracy, they’re just increasing the likelihood that the coup attempt that horrified them in 2020 will be repeated, with more success, in the near future. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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