President Donald Trump now has his second official primary challenger in his bid for re-election in 2020.
Former Congressman Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) announced his candidacy in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, saying that President Trump is “completely unfit to be president,” later adding that he thinks “he’s nuts, he’s erratic, he’s cruel,” and “he stokes bigotry.”
Walsh joins a small field of primary challengers, which only had one other candidate prior to his entry: Former Governor Bill Weld (R-Mass.), who announced his bid in April. While Weld is running mostly to President Trump’s left – being pro-choice, pro-amnesty, and in favor of expanding Medicaid, among others – Walsh is promoting his Tea Party credentials to claim that he is running as a more conservative alternative to the president.
While Walsh claims that President Trump’s rhetoric is divisive, he also has to contend with his own history of incendiary comments. In 2016, the former congressman stated in multiple tweets that he believed former President Barack Obama was a Muslim.
Walsh previously served one term in the House of Representatives, after being narrowly elected to Illinois’ 8th Congressional District in the Tea Party wave of 2010. He was then defeated in 2012 by future Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).