Donald Trump keeps getting bad news. And now more is on the way.
Because Trump just got this bad news from a CIA officer that he can’t believe is true.
Will Hurd, a former CIA officer and outspoken critic of Donald Trump, has officially announced his candidacy for president. He hopes to get support as a moderate alternative to Trump in the Republican primary.
The statement was made on CBS by Hurd, who had previously served in the House for three terms and was the lone Black Republican in the body through January 2021.
The next morning, he announced on “CBS Mornings” that he had “filed to be Republican nominee for president of the United States.”
In a video announcing his run for president, Hurd said that the “soul of our country is under attack,” echoing Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s tagline that the 2020 election is a “battle for the soul of the nation.”
“President Biden can’t solve these problems — or won’t. And if we nominate a lawless, selfish, failed politician like Donald Trump — who lost the House, the Senate, and the White House — we all know Joe Biden will win again.”
Democrats took majority control of the House in 2018 and the Senate in 2020, but the GOP regained control of the House in last year’s midterm elections.
When asked about the GOP’s inability to form a majority government, he tweeted last summer, “the GOP can’t build sustainable majorities if our candidates are praising Hitler on the radio, getting arrested by the FBI for participating in the insurrection, or being evaluated solely on their loyalty to the guy who lost the last election.”
Even though Hurd is not a Trump supporter, he has also been critical of Biden, saying in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that another election pitting the current and former presidents would be “the rematch from hell.”
According to individuals close to him, Hurd has been seriously considering a run for president since the spring, and he has made trips to both Iowa and New Hampshire in recent months. The recent federal criminal indictment of Trump for mishandling secret materials may provide primary voters with an opening for Trump’s detractors like Hurd.
Hurd is entering a competitive Republican race that already includes Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and many others.
Most of the Republican contenders are focusing their campaigns less on Trump and more on Biden because the former continues to have widespread support among Republican voters. Hurd, however, follows in the footsteps of Christie and Hutchinson by publicly condemning Trump and his continuous dominance within the national Republican Party.
Other party members who were critical of the outgoing president considered running for president themselves, including New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.
Hurd has pushed back against prominent Republicans who have been quick to criticize federal prosecutors for charging Trump. In a series of tweets from last August, he claimed that Trump and his attorneys had turned over presidential records that had been inappropriately removed from and housed outside the White House.
Hurd, 45 years old, chose not to seek another term to the House in 2020, saying then that he would rather “pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security.” Last year, he traveled across the nation on a campaign to promote the publication of his book, “American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done.”
During his time in office, Hurd represented the most competitive district in Texas, which included more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) of the 1,200-mile (1,900-kilometer) Texas-Mexico border and was strongly populated by Hispanics from the outskirts of San Antonio to El Paso.
Hurd was a covert officer in Pakistan before he entered politics.
Hurd has earned a reputation in Congress as pro-business and pragmatic, unafraid to seek bipartisan cooperation, despite entering the crowded GOP contest with little national prominence.
Despite devoting much of his career to cybersecurity issues, Hurd was barred from giving the keynote address at a 2019 cybersecurity conference because of his support for Republican positions on abortion restrictions.
His entry into the race extends Texas’s record of having at least one major presidential candidate who first gained national notoriety in Texas or who has lived there while seeking or holding public office.
Stay tuned to the Federalist Wire.
