Jan 6 witness defiant after losing primary and standing up to Trump: ‘I would do it again in a heartbeat’

Rusty Bowers says ‘I’d do it 50 times in a row’

The Arizona legislator who recently testified to the House January 6 select committee about ex-president Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election has no regrets about his actions despite losing Tuesday’s primary election to a Trump-endorsed challenger.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers lost his Republican primary for a state Senate seat in the eastern suburbs of Phoenix by a nearly two-to-one margin, bringing his political career to an apparent end due to the Grand Canyon State’s legislative term limits.

But Mr Bowers told the Associated Press he would not change anything about his conduct over the last year and a half.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” he said. “I’d do it 50 times in a row.”

Mr Bowers incurred Mr Trump’s ire after refusing to back the ex-president’s false claims regarding the conduct of the 2020 election, in which Mr Trump became the first Republican not to carry Arizona since the late senator Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Mr Trump dialed up his attacks on Mr Bowers after he testified before the House select committee last month.

Despite Mr Bowers’ best efforts, candidates who back Mr Trump’s lies now appear to dominate Arizona Republican politics.

The GOP’s nominees for governor and secretary of state have both said they would have refused to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in the state.

Mr Bowers told the AP that Mr Trump is a “dividing force” that has “thrashed” the state GOP and left it with a “bully mentality”.

“It’s not enough to disagree. You have to disagree and then stomp on people and ruin their reputations and chase them down and thrash them and you just keep beating them up. That’s the Trump model,” he said. “And I think you’re going to find out as all these people leave this party, that someday there’s going to be a hard reckoning”.