Joe Walsh, a contentious former congressman turned conservative radio show host, believes his combative style is the GOP’s best chance at wresting control of the Republican Party from President Trump.
Walsh, 57, is expected to announce he’ll challenge Trump for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination as early as this weekend, joining former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld’s efforts in bloodying up the president ahead of the general election.
“If I do do this, I’m going to punch him in the face every single day,” Walsh told the Washington Examiner. “I’m going to call him out because I think he’s an absolute con man who is a danger to the party and the country.”
Walsh’s anti-Trump rhetoric is a shift in stance from 2016, when the Tea Party darling voted for the president. The turning point came after Trump’s joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin last year in Helsinki, when the president said he hadn’t seen any compelling evidence why the Kremlin would have interfered in his election against Hillary Clinton.
Winning the GOP’s nod next year is an almost impossible feat given the current White House occupant’s sky-high approval ratings among his base. But Walsh, who represented Illinois’ 8th Congressional District covering a pocket of the state west of Chicago for a single term from 2011 to 2013, thinks that support is “thin” and that “most Republicans are privately tired of Donald Trump,” particularly those on Capitol Hill.
“They’re tired of his lies, they’re tired of the fact he stands with Putin and not our intelligence people, they’re tired of the fact that he acts like he’s above the law, they’re tired of just the daily bullshit, the daily drama, but they’re afraid to say anything because they want to get reelected,” he said.
Walsh isn’t the only Never Trumper sensing an opportunity to undermine the president.
Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford visited New Hampshire last week to see what traction he could gain with a fiscal conservative platform. Ex-Ohio Gov. John Kasich will make the same trip next month to feel out own his chances in the early-nominating state, while retired Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake has received recruitment calls spurred, in part, by signs of a slowing economy.
Walsh, however, believes Weld’s less aggressive approach from the middle of the political spectrum isn’t working and wanting fiscal responsibility for those more toward the right is “not a good enough reason to challenge this president.”
Yet, concerns remain over how Walsh’s scorched-earth attitude will be received and whether he’s the best anti-Trump messenger, given his past firebrand tactics included questioning former President Barack Obama’s birthplace.
“The country was divided before Trump. I was at the front lines of that divide, and oftentimes, I went over the line, and I got ugly and personal in my attacks. I’ve always tried to own what I’ve said, and I’ve always tried to apologize when I was out of line,” he told the Washington Examiner how he was different from the president. “Donald Trump never has and never will.”
Although Walsh admitted his pathway to victory was slim, he wouldn’t seek to become his party’s standard-bearer if he didn’t think he could win — or at least had a good shot at giving “Republicans out there the opportunity to stick their necks out.” He also vowed to take on the Republican National Committee and any establishment figures who try to “rig the game” against him or another primary challenger when it comes to party-run contests.
“You know what? Maybe there’re better names out there than Joe Walsh. John Kasich, Jeff Flake, but nobody has come to the floor to challenge him. If somebody bigger and better than Joe Walsh were thinking of doing this, I’d get behind them,” he said. “If I can’t win, I at least want to wake up Republican voters to get back to the issues that we believed in before Trump. It’s the right thing to do. Somebody should do this.”
