Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) on Sunday said former President Trump’s 2024 message appeals to an “angry mob” in response to remarks Trump made at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, in which he pitched himself as fighting a “final battle” for “retribution.”
Hutchinson called Trump’s remarks “troubling.”
“First of all, if you want to heal our land, unite our country together, you don’t do it by appealing to the angry mob. And that’s true whether you’re talking about an angry mob from the left or the right. And so that’s problematic,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Whenever you’re looking at the leader of our country, you don’t want him to be engaged in a personal vendetta. And when he talks about vengeance, he’s talking about his personal vendettas, and that’s not healthy for America, it’s certainly not healthy for our party,” Hutchinson said.
The former Arkansas governor is also a rumored possible 2024 contender, but hasn’t officially announced a campaign. On Sunday, he sidestepped a question about whether he’ll enter the presidential primary ring with Trump — but stressed the importance of alternatives to the former president.
“We need to have all alternatives, again, to Donald Trump. We don’t need to be led by arrogance and revenge in the future. We need to be led by those that are problem solving, that want to stick with the principles of our party and unite us together,” Hutchinson said.
He said he’s not too worried that multiple candidates early in the 2024 race could boost Trump’s primary performance because the former president has made “his message of revenge clear.”
Trump kicked off his campaign back in November. His former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have joined him in the race, with a number of other top GOP names rumored to be weighing a run.