Former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois) ended his primary campaign against President Trump for the Republican Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, The Hill reported.
Walsh received just 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses; Trump got 97 percent.
“I am ending my candidacy for president of the United States,” he told CNN’s John Berman. “I got into this because I thought it was really important that there was a Republican—a Republican—out there every day calling out this president for how unfit he is.”
“It’s Trump’s party,” he added. “It’s not a party—it’s a cult.”
Despite Walsh’s conservative credentials, he once claimed, in 1996, to be progressive on LGBT and related issues, Windy City Times reported. After that, however, he voted against LGBT interests many times, earning a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign.
The Hill item is at http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481979-joe-walsh-ends-primary-challenge-to-trump.