The day before former President Donald Trump is expected to announce he is running for President in 2024, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said Trump should be disqualified for his actions on Jan. 6.
“One of the most fundamental tenets of a democratic society is that you accept the outcome of the election, including the one in which you lose,” he told The Confluence on Monday. “And Donald Trump failed at that very important test and failed miserably. And so, in my view, that disqualifies him.”
Toomey has been on a local and national media tour since the election last week to pull the Republican party away from Trump’s influence. Toomey was one of seven Republican Senators who voted to impeach Trump last year. Toomey blamed Trump for inserting himself into the 2022 election and turning attention back to the former president’s 2020 election grievances rather than issues like the economy that favored Republicans. Toomey said that “ultra-MAGA” candidates lost badly on Tuesday, while moderate candidates had more success.
The election in Pennsylvania was a “bloodbath,” Toomey told Fox News, driven by dislike of Republican Gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, a 2020 election denier. “[Mastriano] had the worst drubbing of an open seat statewide candidate, I think, in many, many decades,” Toomey told the Confluence.
Republican Mehmet Oz was a strong candidate, Toomey said, but was brought down by Mastriano. Oz was also endorsed by Trump and won a tight primary fight after a recount. “Our gubernatorial nominee lost by almost 15 points. That’s a stunning loss,” Toomey told the Confluence. “[Oz] was able to keep the race within four [percentage points]. But it's very hard to overcome the headwind of the top of the ticket losing by 15.”
Some analysts have attributed Republican losses to a backlash against the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June. Toomey said the Supreme Court was right to let states decide what abortion restrictions should be allowed. But he predicted that Pennsylvania voters would settle on fewer restrictions than voters in Alabama and more restrictions than voters in Massachusetts.
“Most voters are somewhere in between. And that's where we're going to end up,” he said. “And this that's a better place than having five guys in black robes in Washington decide for the country what the policy is going to be.”
Although Toomey has not said whether he would endorse Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he decided to enter the presidential race, Toomey called him a strong candidate after he won his race for governor in Florida by nearly 20 percentage points. Toomey championed the victories of candidates like DeSantis, who he said were forward-looking, competent and focused on economic prosperity, including Brian Kemp in Georgia and Chris Sununu in New Hampshire.
Toomey said his greatest achievement as a Senator was joining the effort in 2017 to lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Toomey credited the strong economy in 2019 to the tax cuts, including rising wages for the lowest earners. “Every economic measure was near or at an all-time high before the pandemic came along and government shutdowns disrupted everything,” he said.
Toomey said he doesn’t yet have plans for after his term finishes in January, but he will be looking. Toomey resigned his seat because he couldn’t commit to six more years and “never intended to spend my entire life in government or politics.”
