Sen. Jeff Flake said Sunday he hopes a Republican challenges President Trump in the 2020 election, and is not ruling out his own potential bid.
“I hope that somebody does challenge the president,” said Flake, R-Ariz., on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“What I’m seeing is that there is a crying need out there for some Republicans to stand up and say, this is not normal, this is not right.”
Flake, who is retiring from the Senate this year, has been a leading conservative critic of Trump. He authored a book criticizing the president’s policies and behavior for opposing conservative values.
“We want Republicans who will take higher ground,” Flake said. “And to see what’s going on right now, in terms of the chaos, and these actions that clearly are not conservative, on tariffs, and what not. It’s not just the policies, but the behavior, as well. People want to remember the Republican party as the decent party.”
Flake said the “odds are long” that he himself would challenge Trump in 2020, and conceded the president currently has the support of the Republican voting base.
But he said Trump could lose GOP backing by 2020, especially if the party suffers losses in the 2018 midterms, which Flake predicted could happen.
“I don’t know who will step up in the end,” Flake said. “I hope somebody does. I’m not ruling it out, but certainly, the odds are long that I would do it. It would be extremely difficult to defeat the president right now if the election were held in a Republican primary. This is the Trump party right now. I just am not sure that it will be two years from now. We could have a completely different scenario. Nothing focuses the mind like a big election loss, and what might happen in the midterm is a big election loss.”
