Former Sen. Pat Toomey (R), who represented the key state of Pennsylvania for 12 years in the Senate, says he won’t vote for former President Trump or Vice President Harris in November’s election.
Toomey noted during an interview on CNBC that he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but can’t bring himself to support Trump again because of his efforts to overturn the results of the last 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 a contentious back-and-forth exchange with “Squawk Box” host Joe Kernen.
Toomey acknowledged he doesn’t support Harris, the Democratic nominee, and views many of her policies as economically disastrous.
Toomey, who retired from the Senate at the end of 2022, was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial on the charge of inciting an insurrection against the United States.
Kernen pressed Toomey, a long-time fiscal conservative, over elements of Harris’s economic plan, such as raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent and the capital gains tax rate to 45 percent for the nation’s highest income earners.
“I acknowledge that the outcome is a binary situation, but my choice is not,” Toomey said when Kernen insisted the former senator would in essence be voting to benefit Harris by not voting for Trump.
“It is an acceptable position for me to say that neither of these candidates can be my choice for president,” Toomey said.
And he argued Republican control of the Senate would be “essential” to keep Harris in check if she’s elected to the Oval Office.
“The answer to that is Republican control of the Senate and that is absolutely essential,” he said of the prospect of Harris proposing major tax increases as president.
“If the other side runs the table, then Katie bar the door. 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 warned, referring to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
He predicted Harris would push “huge tax increases” and “some version of ‘Medicare for All’” if she is elected president.
“The good news is I think Republicans are going to take the Senate,” he said.
And he argued Senate Republicans could “mitigate” a future President Harris’s executive actions “by its power of confirmation.”
“They’ve got to hang tough on some of these nominees,” he said of what Senate Republicans would need to do in 2025 if they win control of the Senate to slow Harris’s agenda.
Toomey represented Pennsylvania in the Senate from January 2011 to January 2023.
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