Jason Chaffetz Says Voting for Trump Doesn’t Mean He is Endorsing Him

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Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:28 pm

So see if you can figure this one out: Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” he is voting for Trump, but that voting for Trump does not mean he is endorsing Trump.

Blitzer asked what the rest of us were feeling:

“What is the difference? If you tell your supporters in Utah, ‘I’m voting for Donald Trump,’ that sounds to me like an endorsement.

The reality-challenged Republican answered:

“I think they’re different. I think the endorsement is far different than who you actually vote for. And it’s the one vote I actually do for myself. I don’t represent anybody else. We all get the same vote. But in the context of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, it’s Donald Trump.”

Oh, so doing it for yourself means it’s not an endorsement? No, a vote is a tacit endorsement. This is sort of the same thing we saw with The Mouth of Trump Katrina Pierson when she said,

“He hasn’t changed his position on immigration. He’s changed the words that he is saying.”

Chaffetz had previously said after the release of the Access Hollywood video that he could not look his wife or daughter in the eye again if he voted for Trump:

“I’m out. I can no longer endorse Donald Trump for president. There’s no possible way I vote for Hillary Clinton. But, these are abhorrent. They are wrong … And, you know, my wife, Julie and I, we’ve got a 15-year-old daughter. Do you think I can look her in the eye and tell her that I endorse Donald Trump for President when he acts like this in his apology?”

Blitzer asked him what had changed that he could do so now and Chaffetz answered:

“I will never support, condone, defend anybody’s actions whether they’re words or actual actions to defame or to demoralize or take advantage of women in any shape or form. I want my daughters to understand that, I want America to understand that. But at the end of the day, you still have to make a choice.”

Chaffetz’s answer says a great deal more about Chaffetz and his flagging moral compass than it does about Hillary Clinton. He did have to make a choice, and he very publicly said, by making that choice, that Donald Trump’s sexual assaults on women are perfectly acceptable.

The Utah Republican can play word games all he wants, but by voting, and publicly saying he was voting for Trump, he has endorsed the man who brags about sexually assaulting women.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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