Joe Walsh Will Make Long-Shot Challenge to Trump in GOP Primary

(Bloomberg) -- Former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh announced Sunday he’ll challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020, saying the president is unfit and must be opposed.

“He’s nuts, he’s erratic, he’s cruel, he stokes bigotry, he’s incompetent, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Walsh said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The bet that my campaign is making -- and I’m going to pound Trump every single day -- he’s a bully, and he’s a coward, and somebody has to call him out.”

Walsh, a nationally syndicated talk-radio host with a lively Twitter account, joins former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who’s been running against Trump since April. Others in the wings at least considering a challenge include former Tennessee Senator Bob Corker; Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina congressman who was also the state’s governor; and former Ohio Governor John Kasich.

But they face the prospects of challenging an incumbent president who enjoys overwhelming support from the party. A recent AP poll found that nearly eight in 10 Republicans approve of his overall job performance, while only 20% disapprove. Other surveys have put Trump’s approval among Republican voters even higher.

Still, Walsh said he thinks many Republicans are privately opposed to Trump but are afraid to come forward.

“Most Republican voters are tired of the drama, they’re tired of his BS,” Walsh said.

Weld ‘Thrilled’

Weld said he’s “thrilled” about Walsh and potentially other Republicans challenging Trump.

“I think that’s terrific, and it’s going to be a more robust conversation,” Weld said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That’ll be good for the country. We need to assemble rational people.”

Walsh, who served one term as a congressman from a district in the Chicago suburbs, said he regrets negative comments about former President Barack Obama that “helped create Trump.” Walsh in 2016 called Obama an “enemy of the state” and a “traitor,” among other things.

But the incumbent president is “tweeting us into a recession,” and Republicans need an alternative choice, Walsh said.

“The only thing he cares about is Trump,” Walsh said. “He doesn’t give a damn about America.”

Former Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah called Walsh’s challenge of the president “an absolute joke.”

“That’s generous, to say that it’s a challenge,” Chaffetz said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Niquette in Columbus at mniquette@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Steve Geimann

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