Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, and would not be deterred if Donald Trump made an expected bid to return to the White House.
It won't deter me, Hutchinson told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.
I made it clear. I think we need to have a different direction in the future, and so I am not aligned with Trump on some of his endorsements, but rather the direction he wants to take our country.
I think he did a lot of good things for our country, but we need to go a different direction and that is not a factor in my decision-making process. After being convicted in his second Senate impeachment trial, Trump was charged with inciting the January 6 Capitol attack, in his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden.
More than 20 years ago, Hutchinson was a House impeachment manager in the trial of Bill Clinton over the 42nd president's affair with Monica Lewinsky. As Arkansas governor, Hutchinson now works in the more moderate lane of Republican politics.
He was asked about an appearance last week at a Politics Eggs event in New Hampshire, a traditional stop for presidential hopefuls in an early voting state.
He said you have to get through the course this year, but that is an option on the table. That is one of the reasons I was in New Hampshire. Hutchinson used CNN interview to take a shot at Ron DeSantis, another potential candidate in 2024, about the Florida governor's battle with Disney over his anti-LGBTQ schools policy.
The Arkansas governor was asked if he would support Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and ardent Trump ally, to become a speaker if Republicans take control in November.
He said: Well, you know, Speaker McCarthy, or excuse me, Majority Leader McCarthy has his own set of challenges within the caucus. He has to be able to bring that together. McCarthy was recently shown to have said that Trump should resign in the aftermath of the Capitol attack, to have changed his tune to support the former president, and to lie about what he told his party.
Hutchinson told CNN: "I would say that we had one message after January 6 among many of our leaders recognising the problem with the insurrection. That tone has changed and I believe that it is an error.
I don't think we can diminish what happened on January 6. We're going to have hearings there in Congress, and much of this will come out in public in June, and that won't be helpful for those who don't know the significance of that event.
And so that worries me in terms of not just the majority leader, but also worries me in terms of other leaders that have diminished what happened on January 6.