The former Republican congressman who could be challenging Donald Trump for the party’s nomination in 2020 just took aim at the president on Twitter, saying that his “entire life is a lie.”
Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party Republican who once backed Trump in 2016, has now become one of the president’s most vocal critics from the right. On Thursday, Walsh took aim at Trump on Twitter in calling him a liar.
“Donald Trump has lied his entire life. In fact, his entire life is a lie. He’s a fraud,” Walsh wrote.
The attack came just one day after a New York Times report revealed that the former Illinois congressman is planning to launch a primary challenge of Trump next year. The report noted that Walsh has been quietly putting the pieces of his campaign together, including hiring a senior political adviser and meeting with some of Trump’s chief critics in New York.
Walsh did not deny the reports when asked by The New York Times if he was planning to run.
“If I do it, it’s going to be before Labor Day,” he said.
Joe Walsh frequently attacks Trump on Twitter, pushing back against false statements from the president and admonishing him for failing to keep promises about reducing the federal deficit and instead adding to it significantly. Walsh has also pushed back against what he sees as Trump’s racially charged rhetoric, including when the president went on Twitter to tell four Democratic congresswomen of color to go back to their “original” countries — even though three were born in the United States and the fourth is a naturalized citizen who emigrated from Somalia.
Walsh had taken aim at Trump earlier in the week while also criticizing other Republicans for failing to stand up to him.
“You wake up this morning reminded again that Donald Trump is completely unfit to be President,” Walsh wrote on Twitter . “But what’s most disappointing once again this morning is the continued cowardly silence of Congressional Republicans in the face of this overwhelming truth.”
He bragged about how much victims of mass shootings love him. He actually bragged about it.
He actually did. https://t.co/zhXDbWJPiN
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) August 21, 2019
Walsh would likely face an uphill battle in trying to knock Trump off the ticket in 2020. While Trump’s approval ratings have been steadily sinking and The Hill noted that his disapproval hit 62 percent in an Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released this week, he remains largely popular with Republican voters and has a significant fundraising advantage. No sitting president has ever lost a primary challenge in the following election cycle.
