Rep. Jason Chaffetz on switching back to Trump: My vote for Trump is different from an endorsement of Trump https://t.co/0NcSReb2Bj
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 3, 2016
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Thursday defended his decision to cast a ballot for Donald Trump, arguing there is a difference between endorsing someone and voting for them.
“I guess I do see a difference between an endorsement and publicly defending somebody and my actual vote,” the House Oversight Committee chairman said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”
{mosads}Chaffetz said last week that he would vote for Trump, backtracking from a comment he made last month that he could no longer “in good conscience” endorse the GOP nominee.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer pushed back Thursday, questioning whether there was really a difference between an endorsement and a vote.
“If you tell your supporters in Utah ‘I’m voting for Donald Trump,’ that sounds to me like an endorsement,” Blitzer said.
“Well, I think they’re different,” Chaffetz insisted.
“I think the endorsement is far different from who you actually vote for. It’s the one vote I actually do for myself. I don’t represent anybody else. We all get the same vote.”
Chaffetz initially withdrew his endorsement following the release of a 2005 hot mic tape of Trump making sexually obscene comments about women.
“It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine. My wife and I, we have a 15-year-old daughter, and if I can’t look her in the eye and tell her these things, I can’t endorse this person,” Chaffetz said after the video’s release.
Fewer than three weeks later, Chaffetz announced on Twitter that he would vote for Trump anyway.
“I will not defend or endorse @realDonaldTrump, but I am voting for him. HRC is that bad. HRC is bad for the USA,” he wrote, using Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s initials.
Later in the CNN interview, Chaffetz said he assumes the women who have accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances are telling the truth.
“I don’t know if they’re telling the truth or if they’re not telling the truth… I assume that it’s true and hope that it’s not.”