GOP congressman vows to oppose ‘loser’ Trump if former president runs again

A Republican congressman in Ohio is vowing to do whatever he can to stop former President Donald Trump from attaining the 2024 GOP nomination for president, and denounced him in a scathing interview.

Speaking with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Rep Anthony Gonzalez tore into the former president, who he said was a “loser” who was refusing to acknowledge his own failure in the 2020 election.

“We have to be a party of truth, and the cold hard truth is Donald Trump led us into a ditch on January 6th. The former president lied to us. He lied to every one of us, and in doing so, he cost us the House, the Senate, and the White House,” said Mr Gonzalez.

“I see, fundamentally, a person who shouldn’t be able to hold office again because of what he did around January 6th, but I also see somebody who is an enormous political loser. I don’t know why anybody who wants to win elections going forward would follow that. I don’t get it ethically and certainly not politically. Neither of them make sense.”

Mr Gonzalez previously announced that he would not seek a third term in Congress, but said in the interview on Sunday he would re-enter politics and mount a presidential bid if necessary to stop Mr Trump from being the party’s standard-bearer once again.

“If he’s the nominee again in ‘24, I will do everything I personally can to make sure he doesn’t win. I’m not voting for Democrats, but whether that’s find a viable third party or whether that’s try to defeat him in primaries, whatever it is, that’s going to be where I’ll spend my time,” said the Ohio congressman.

Mr Gonzalez previously won reelection in Ohio’s 16th district by nearly 30 points in 2020, however, redistricting in the state meant that his district was set to be redrawn before the next election, throwing his future into question.

In February, before it became clear that redistricting would mean the end of Mr Gonzalez’s re-election bid, he faced machinations by Trump-supporting Republicans in state who hoped to defeat him in a primary election in response to his support for the second impeachment of Mr Trump by the House.

Mr Gonzalez’s impeachment vote resulted in his censure by the Medina County Republican Party and a call for his resignation from another regional GOP group.

He defended his vote to punish Mr Trump for the 6 January attack on the US Capitol in February on a podcast, explaining that the slow response of the National Guard and other law enforcement agencies convinced him.

“The reality is the Congress and the vice president were under attack by a mob and the president didn't step up in my opinion in nearly the right way to calm it down, to stop it,” Mr Gonzalez said at the time.

“You know I think I'd probably be a no if he had seen all of this and immediately said 'hey cut this out, here comes the National Guard, we're done, this isn't what I wanted' but instead we had multiple hours go by and the first tweet that went out was actually attacking the vice president while the Capitol was under siege,” he continued.