President Trump said Thursday that he welcomes a 2020 challenge from outgoing Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
“I hope so,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday in response whether or not he believes Flake or Kasich will run for president in 2020.
Flake and Kasich have each toyed with the idea of running for president in the next cycle and both spoke publicly on the topic in the past month. “I’ve not ruled it out. I’ve not ruled it in. Just, somebody needs to run on the Republican side,” Flake told Politico.
“I hope somebody does, just to remind Republicans what it means to be conservative and what it means to be decent. We’ve got to bring that back,” Flake said in what was an apparent jab at the president. “You can whip up the base for a cycle or two but it wears thin. Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.”
Kasich told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in November that he was “very seriously” considering a bid for the presidency in 2020. He appeared to offer a rebuke of the president, commenting on the “name calling” and “division within our country.”
“These are earnest conversations that go on virtually every day with some of my friends, with my family. Look, we need different leadership, there isn’t any question about it. I’m not only just worried about the tone, and the name calling, and the division in our country, and the partisanship, but I also worry about the policies,” Kasich said.
The president and Flake have had a contentious relationship, often trading verbal blows and speaking out against each other in the media.
Flake drew the president’s ire most recently for his attempts to get the Senate to vote on a bill that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller in the event Trump decided to terminate him.
Mocking him with the nickname “Flake(y),” Trump said the senator was only pushing the bill because he wanted to stay politically relevant after failing to secure enough support to run for re-election.
“Jeff Flake(y) doesn’t want to protect the Non-Senate confirmed Special Counsel, he wants to protect his future after being unelectable in Arizona for the ‘crime’ of doing a terrible job! A weak and ineffective guy!” the president tweeted.
Flake’s repeated denouncements of the president did work to hurt his reputation among Republican and conservative voters.
In his farewell speech to the Senate on Thursday, Flake took one last chance to criticize the president, but did not directly mention his name.
“My colleagues, to say that our politics is not healthy is something of an understatement,” Flake said. “I believe that we all know well that this is not a normal time, that the threats to our democracy from within and without are real, and none of us can say with confidence how the situation that we now find ourselves in will turn out.”
