GOP lawmaker who compared Trump to Mussolini will vote for him

A House Republican who once compared Donald Trump to a fascist dictator and called on him to step aside now plans to vote for the GOP presidential nominee.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said Trump is still preferable to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“It is very clear that Donald Trump is a better choice than Hillary Clinton,” Stewart said in a video posted by St. George News. “At the end of the day I will be voting for Donald Trump.”

{mosads}He explained that a vote for any candidate apart from Trump would help hand the election to Clinton. 

Independent candidate Evan McMullin is polling close to Clinton and Trump in Utah, making the normally reliable GOP state into a late-in-the-game battleground.

“These other candidates are just not going to win,” Stewart said. “Given that choice, it’s very clear to me what is better for our country. It is very clear that Donald Trump is a better choice than Hillary Clinton.”

Stewart’s stance is a reversal from earlier this month, when he called on Trump to step aside and allow vice presidential nominee Mike Pence to stand at the top of the ticket instead. Many Republicans disavowed Trump after the public release of a 2005 recording in which Trump brags about using his celebrity to get away with touching women without their consent.

“Unlike the Democrats who have proven completely unwilling to hold Secretary Clinton accountable for her illegal activities that endangered our national security, I am willing to hold Mr. Trump accountable. I am therefore calling for him to step aside and to allow Mike Pence to lead our party,” Stewart said in a statement a few weeks ago.

Since then, many of those same Republicans — Stewart included — have announced they will vote for Trump after all. 

Fellow Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the House Oversight Committee chairman, also said Wednesday he would vote for Trump, despite declaring hours after the tape’s release that he could “no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president.”

Stewart had been critical of Trump even before the tape’s release.

In March, he told University of Utah students that Trump is “our Mussolini,” the World War II-era Italian dictator.