WASHINGTON _ Former Rep. Joe Walsh, once a backer of President Trump, said Sunday he would mount a Republican primary challenge to the president because "we can't take four more years of Donald Trump."
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," the former Illinois congressman, now a radio talk-show host, called Trump "completely unfit to be president." He said he was launching his quixotic bid because "nobody in the Republican Party stepped up" despite what he described as deep dismay over Trump's performance.
"Everybody believes_in the Republican Party, everybody believes he's unfit," said Walsh, a tea-party stalwart who formerly represented a suburban Chicago district before losing his seat in 2012. "He lies every time he opens his mouth."
Walsh's announcement that he would contest the 2020 Republican nomination followed a head-spinning week, even by the turbulent standards of Trump's administration. Over a period of days, the president engaged in a series of striking policy gyrations and a stream of provocative commentary.
With many economists citing signs that the economy could be tilting toward a recession, Trump responded by touting the economy's strength even as he repeatedly contradicted himself on tax policy, intensified a trade war with China and excoriated his own appointed head of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome H. Powell.
Along the way, he scrapped a visit to Denmark, a NATO ally, angered by the country's firm rejection of his idea to buy the Arctic island of Greenland. He also denounced Democratic-voting Jews as "disloyal," reviving a centuries-old anti-Semitic trope, and declared that he was "the chosen one." He later insisted he had been joking.
Through it all, leading congressional Republicans were almost uniformly silent. Walsh said that left him convinced that the party was out of step with voter perceptions, despite polling that indicates strong support for Trump among Republican voters.
Polls suggest the a large majority of Republican voters approve of the direction in which Trump has taken the party. A significant minority disapproves, which could provide a base for a challenge, but because the Republicans have "winner take all" rules in many primaries, a challenger might end up with no convention delegates even if he won a large share of votes.
The party's national committee has thrown its machinery into high gear in support of the president, and Trump backers are in firm control of GOP party leadership in key primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Walsh insisted he was undaunted. "The country is sick of this guy's tantrum," Walsh, 57, said of Trump, who is in Biarritz, France, this weekend for a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies. "He's a child."
In contrast to the crowded Democratic field, Trump so far has faced only one GOP challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who ran for vice president in 2016 on the Libertarian Party ticket.
Weld said he thought it was "terrific" that Walsh was entering the race, and called on others to jump in as well, because more Republican candidates would lead to a more robust debate about the party's direction.
"We need to assemble rational people," Weld said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Sure, a crazed president makes the stock market go down, but that doesn't mean we have to like it."
Walsh himself has a reputation for inflammatory rhetoric, sometimes targeting ethnic, religious or racial minorities in a manner reminiscent of Trump's. But he said he had grown disillusioned with Trump's combative style and policy stumbles.
Walsh said he now regretted some of the political tactics that he employed in the past, including highly personal attacks on Trump's predecessor.
"I said some ugly things about President Obama that I regret," Walsh said in the ABC interview, calling some of his own language "hateful." He said he himself helped champion a political style that became a Trump hallmark.
"I helped create Trump," Walsh told "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos. "And George, that's not an easy thing to say."
