Utah Congressman Rob Bishop retired this month after nine terms in Washington. He talks about the mob violence in the capital last week and his plans for the future.
Retiring Republican Congressman Rob Bishop spent 18 years representing Utah’s first district. The district includes Summit County. Representative Blake Moore, a Republican from Ogden, now holds the seat after winning November’s election.
Bishop said the violent protests last week were disheartening but stopped short of condemning the United States president for inciting the violence.
“It is where I would work and walk and took tour groups all along. My heart sunk in what I saw taking place. It's going to be awhile to sort out all the details of what was going on. But it is wrong.”
He said there is no evidence of election fraud, and he would not have joined other republican house members by voting against President-Elect Joe Biden’s electoral confirmation. He compared his decision to vote against the two impeachment articles brought by congress in 2019 against the president.
“If I was going to vote for that, I was going to have firm evidence that what the president had done rose to the level of impeachment. And there was no actual firm evidence. A lot of accusations and smoke but no evidence. I had the same situation here. Could there have been some manipulation of the election? Possibly. But there is no firm evidence of it.”
Bishop said there was justification for congressional members to have voted either way on Jan 6 when the congress was meeting to confirm the Biden Presidency's electoral votes.
“Certification is the responsibility of the state’s and you take the state’s word for it. But the other issue was, should there be some mechanism to go in there and look at what actually did take place in case there is some kind of irregularity that needs to be fixed going forward? And that's why whether one voted yes or no on Wednesday, you can justify it because there's basically two different questions that were being asked. Is there anything wrong with trying to investigate what actually took place? No, there's nothing wrong with that.”
He doesn’t take credit for saving Hill Air Force Base 20-years ago when the military considered base closures and realignments. He said now. It would be impossible to replicate the base services elsewhere.
“It’s not necessarily what I did that helped save Hill Air Force Base. It’s the quality of the workers that are there. The quality of the workers that are there. The quality of the public support around that base, that is one of the things that stands out in vast contrast to other bases in other states.”
Bishop said he is most proud of the under-the-radar work he did while in Washington. He said some go to Congress and take themselves too seriously. He set a different tone.
“And I put a lot of effort into trying to make sure that I wouldn't let my staff call me sir or the boss. I insisted that I hold the door for them, that they didn't have to stand when I came into the room which was a practice back in Washington that I just found appalling.”
Bishop was on the November ticket as Lieutenant Governor with Thomas Wright, one of Utah’s Gubernatorial candidates but lost in the primary.
Bishop is recovering from a mild stroke and is in physical therapy, although he feels intellectually uncompromised. He said he would like to return to teaching once he is physically recovered.
