Gov. Larry Hogan was still mulling a 2020 bid after special counsel Robert Mueller cleared President Trump of colluding with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, an aide to the Maryland Republican confirmed on Monday.
Hogan has been encouraged to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination by opponents of the president inside the Republican Party. The governor has emphasized he would not wage a quixotic primary against Trump. But even though Trump appeared stronger politically post-Mueller, Hogan was still weighing several factors, and did not plan to make a definitive decision about running for president until as late as early fall.
“It’s not moving the needle one way or the other,” the Hogan aide said of Mueller’s findings, in an email exchange with the Washington Examiner.
The Mueller report has been a crucial marker as Never Trump Republicans, and Republicans that might join their endeavor, plot their next move. Had the investigation turned up damaging information, Trump would have immediately been vulnerable and action to challenge him for renomination might have accelerated. Now anti-Trump Republicans must sit and wait for another shoe to drop, if one drops at all.
But at least one Republican prominent in the effort to replace Trump is saying that not much has changed — despite a conclusion of the Russia probe that is favorable to the president. Sarah Longwell, who is working with conservative journalist Bill Kristol to spark a Republican revolt against Trump in 2020, said Mueller was never a “go-no-go line” for the effort that she is involved in.
“Running a primary challenge to President Trump was never predicated on the Mueller report,” said Longwell, who has urged Hogan to consider running. “It has to do with temperament and policy and who is [the] right standard-bearer for the Republican Party.”
Hogan was re-elected by a wide margin in deep blue Maryland last year, piquing the interest of some Republicans concerned about Trump’s 2020 viability in the aftermath of a midterm election that saw the Democrats win 40 seats and flip the House of Representatives, in what amounted to a major rebuke of the White House.
Hogan has welcomed the attention and flirted with a presidential bid, listening as Never Trump Republicans encourage him to seek the White House. Next month, the governor is headed to New Hampshire for an event, “Politics & Eggs,” that typically attracts presidential contenders.
But Hogan is not naive. In an interview with the Washington Examiner in February, the governor said he would not launch a “kamikaze mission” and challenge Trump if the president was in good shape politically and had a lock on the GOP nomination. However, Hogan added at the time, he expected Trump’s political situation to change.
“If things stay the way they are, it doesn’t make too much sense,” Hogan said. “I don’t think things are going to stay the way they are.”
Trump’s job approval with self-identified Republican voters was sky-high before Mueller’s report was submitted, so an exhaustive federal investigation concluding that the president did not conspire with Russia should only serve to tighten his grip on the party even more.
But Hogan appears patient, content to wait and see if other probes into Trump — by House Democrats and possibly the Southern District of New York — net more political trouble for the president.
Meanwhile, the Trump re-election campaign is going on offense, using the conclusions of the Mueller report, as summarized in a four-page letter to Congress by Attorney General William Barr, as a weapon to bludgeon the Democrats and the president’s critics on the Left and to tar what the White House views believes is a hostile media.
On Monday afternoon, the Trump campaign issued a memo to television producers urging for more fairness in coverage of the Russia probe and more circumspection in the booking and questioning of guests who claim that the president colluded with Moscow.
“The American people have been bombarded by these accusations, through the media, for two long years. They have been told that their legitimately elected president had colluded with Russia — a claim proven to be false. At this point, there must be introspection from the media who facilitated the reckless statements and a serious evaluation of how such guests are considered and handled in the future,” Tim Murtaugh, Trump campaign spokesman, wrote in the memo.
