Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is revealing what “a couple” of President Donald Trump’s cabinet secretaries encouraged him to do.
The Republican governor was reportedly pushed by a few of the president’s cabinet secretaries to run against Trump in the Republican primary in the 2020 presidential election, he reveals in his book, “Still Standing.”
“But cabinet secretaries? Encouraging me to consider running against their boss, the president? That one surprised me,” Hogan wrote in his new book. Hogan was asked about the “stunning revelation” during an interview with Bloomberg TV host Kevin Cirilli.
“There were only a couple and I am not going to reveal the names because they were private conversations and I certainly would not want to see a couple of friends fired from the administration,” Hogan said.
He continued:
“I don’t think it comes as any surprise to folks that there are a lot of people in the administration who have sometimes spoken out. […] I did not have any kind of a serious effort to try to run for president. But a lot of people were encouraging me. I was very surprised to hear how close some of these folks were actually in the White House.”
Watch Hogan’s interview below:
Asked what the motivation was behind those cabinet secretaries pushing for Hogan to run in the Republican primary, Hogan responded, “I think it was a little bit about concerns about losing the election and about … was the bottom is going to drop out of this thing and what was the alternative. And could we find someone that would perhaps put together a winning coalition in the fall.”
When asked about not voting for Trump in 2016 and if he would endorse Trump in the 2020 election, Hogan said, “That’s a decision that we have from now until November to figure out.”
“Right now, I am chairing the National Governors Association and I’m sort of prohibited from getting too actively involved in the partisan politics because I’m representing governors on both sides of the aisle and we are trying to get things done in Washington,” he added. “So I’ll leave that to later to figure out.”