GOP Sen. Pat Toomey says Trump's chances of winning the party's 2024 presidential nomination are 'much more tenuous' following the January 6 committee's hearings

• Sen. Pat Toomey suggested the January 6 committee's hearings had hurt Trump, even among Republicans.
• The retiring senator said Trump's grip on the 2024 nomination was "much more tenuous" now.

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania suggested Thursday that public hearings from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, had damaged former President Donald Trump politically, even among Republicans.

At the end of a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg that focused on the Supreme Court's recent ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Reserve's approach to tackling inflation, the retiring lawmaker was asked whether he believed the hearings would preclude Trump from seeking a second term as president in 2024.

"I don't know that it means that. I mean he gets to decide whether he's going to run," said Toomey, who was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of an insurrection after the Capitol riot.

"Look, I think he disqualified himself from serving in public office by virtue of his post-election behavior, especially leading right up to January 6," Toomey said. "I think the revelations from this committee make his path to even the Republican nomination much more tenuous."

Most recently, the committee received testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer who testified that Trump knew the crowd on the National Mall on January 6 was armed, that he was prone to throwing dishes and flipping tablecloths, that he tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential limo when informed that he wasn't being taken to the Capitol on the day of the riot, and that both Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani sought pardons from Trump in the final days of his administration.

Members of the former president's inner circle told Insider that Hutchinson's testimony was "definitely the most damning day" of the entire session of hearings and that her allegations were "real difficult to dismiss."

Toomey went on to suggest that the former president, still seen by most of the party as its undisputed leader and a shoo-in for the 2024 nomination, was a weak candidate.

"You know, never say never — and he decides whether to throw his hat in the ring — but I think we'll have a stronger candidate," Toomey said.