Republican strategist Lauren Claffey said Wednesday that if Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) decided to challenge President Trump in 2020, it wouldn’t result in any “real political gain.”
“For Justin Amash it’s not going to be any sort of real political gain,” Claffey, who is a managing director of Hamilton Place Strategies, told Hill.TV. “He’s not going to win anything, he may just get a couple of votes and a lot of media interviews.”
However, the Republican strategist noted that Amash could potentially pull some important votes away from President Trump in key states.
“Just like any other third party candidate it would pull away votes from what’s already going to be a tight race for him and so he’s not going to want that,” she said.
Amash told The Hill on Tuesday he would not rule out a third-party challenge to Trump in response to a question over whether he was thinking about leaving the Republican Party to run for president as the Libertarian Party candidate.
The question came as Amash has been facing backlash this week after becoming the first Republican in the House to support impeachment proceedings against Trump for obstruction of justice.
Amash also accused Attorney General William Barr of “deliberately misrepresenting” special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings from the Russia investigation.
Trump and his supporters quickly moved to shut Amash’s comments down, saying the lawmaker is just looking to make headlines.
“He never supported the president, and I think he’s just looking for attention,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Fox News a day after Amash made his remarks.
Amash, who is a founding member of the conservative voting bloc House Freedom Caucus, has frequently spoken out against the president and even at one point supporting legislation to block Trump’s emergency declaration at the southern border.
—Tess Bonn
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