Retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) advised his party not to nominate former President Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential race.
During an interview with CNBC on Friday, the Pennsylvania senator, who is not seeking re-election in 2022, was asked how he would feel if Trump becomes the GOP nominee in the forthcoming presidential election.
“I think that the future of our party is to be a party of ideas, and not to be a party about any one individual, and I think we will learn a lot from the next set of primaries,” Toomey said. “I think after what happened post-2020 election, I think the president’s behavior was completely unacceptable, so I don’t think he should be the nominee to lead the party in 2024.”
“It is President Trump who departed from Republican orthodoxy and conservative orthodoxy in a variety of ways. I stuck to the conservative views that I’ve had for a long time, he had a different point of view on matters such as trade and sometimes immigration and other things,” he added.
Toomey was among the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump for encouraging the Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol. The senator became estranged from his party, along with others like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), who refused to show their to the former president.
