Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said Friday that he has decided he will not vote for President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Scott, a Republican, has been a vocal critic of Trump for years and said earlier that he did not vote for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, according to the Associated Press.
During a coronavirus newsletter in Vermont on Friday, one reporter asked Scott if he had decided which of the two presidential candidates he would support in the wake of the Democratic National Convention. The convention was held earlier this week as a most virtual event and concluded on Thursday night with former Vice President Joe Biden formally accepting his party’s nomination.
“I have been very conscious of not supporting the president,” Scott said. “I will not vote for President Trump.”
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Trump is expected to formally accept his party’s nomination for re-election at the Republican National Convention next week. Newsweek reached Trump’s campaign for comment, but received no response for publication at the time.
Although Scott said he has decided to vote against the official president, he said he is not yet sure if he will support Trump’s Democratic challenger.
“I have not yet decided at this point whether I will give a vote to former Vice President Biden,” Scott said. “But it’s what I would consider. I just did not make that decision at this point.”
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Earlier this year, Scott said he believed Trump “should not be in office,” according to the Associated Press. Scott supported the Democrats’ impeachment question in 2019, which ended with the House approving two articles of impeachment and the House losing the president of both.
“I believe the president is abusing his powers,” Scott said when asked about the impeachment investigation during a February news conference. “I did not vote for the president, and I do not believe he should be in office.”
Scott is far from alone in speaking out against Trump as Election Day approaches. Although Trump recently said he maintains strong support from his Republican base, some defectors launched anti-Trump campaigns in attempts to shift Republican support from Trump to Biden. While one of those campaigns, Republican voters against Trump, collects and shares videos of Republican voters explaining why they do not intend to support Trump in November, another, called the Lincoln Project, is actively targeting Trump and vulnerable congressional cities by sharing campaign ads approving their challenger.
In Vermont, voters have turned blue in all presidential elections since 1988, according to data compiled by 270towin.com. AP election results said Hillary Clinton won more than 56 percent of voters in the state when Trump first ran for president in 2016. In the two previous elections, the AP results found that former President Barack Obama won 67 and 68 percent of the vote in Vermont, both elections in which Biden came to the polls with Obama as his running mate.
