Collins says she’s ‘very unlikely’ to support Trump in 2024

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said on Sunday that it is “very unlikely” she would support former President Trump should he run for reelection in 2024.

“Certainly it’s not likely given the many other qualified candidates that we have that have expressed interest in running, so it’s very unlikely,” Collins said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“We’re a long ways from 2024, but let me say this: I do not think that President Trump should have made that pledge to do pardons. We should let the judicial process proceed,” she added, referring Trump’s suggestion during a rally in Texas on Saturday that he would consider pardoning those charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” the former president said.

“And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons,” he added. “Because they are being treated so unfairly.”

Collins noted during the ABC appearance that Jan. 6 was “a dark day in our history.” 

She also criticized President Biden’s handling of the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy following Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement. 

“I believe that diversity benefits the Supreme Court,” Collins said of Biden’s commitment to nominating a Black woman for the role. “But the way that the president has handled this nomination has been clumsy at best.” 

“It adds to the further perception that the court is a political institution like Congress when it is not supposed to be,” she also said. 

Collins’s remarks come as an ABC News-Ipsos poll showed that 76 percent of Americans wanted the president to consider “all possible nominees,” while just 23 percent wanted him to consider only Black women for the nomination.