Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announces 2024 bid for president
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Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he is going to run for president in 2024 in an interview on Sunday.
He also didn’t shy away from asking former President Donald Trump to drop out of the race following his indictment stemming from alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Hutchinson, a Republican, told Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” that though a formal announcement is scheduled for later in April, in Bentonville, Arkansas, he plans to run.
“And the reason is, I’ve traveled the country for six months, I hear people talk about the leadership of our country. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts,” he said.
Asa Hutchinson calls for Trump to withdraw
When news of Trump’s indictment broke, many Republicans, including GOP candidates in the running for 2024, coalesced around the former president, who is a leading GOP contender for 2024 in the polls.
For starters, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley said Trump’s indictment was “more about revenge than justice” and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy called it “un-American” and “politically motivated,” as the Deseret News reported.
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Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also expected to run for president in 2024, said the “unprecedented indictment” over the campaign finance issue was “an outrage.”
But Hutchinson, a moderate Republican, maintained his view that Trump should withdraw from the race. “But at the same time, we know he’s not (going to). And there’s not any constitutional requirement,” he said in the interview.
He also differentiated himself from other candidates by positioning himself as “non-Trump” instead of “anti-Trump.”
“When I say ‘non-Trump,’ I want to be able to speak to the Trump voters,” he told Karl. “I want to be able to speak to all of the party and say, this is the leadership that I want to provide, and I think that we need to have border security. I think we need to have a strong America; we need to spend less at the federal level. These are the values that I represent.”
Asa Hutchinson’s tenure as governor
This isn’t the first time Hutchinson has opposed Trump. Earlier this year, he said Jan. 6 should “disqualify” the former president for the future, as The Hill reported.
Hutchinson didn’t question the Manhattan grand jury’s decision to indict Trump as politically charged, either, unlike the other GOP 2024 contenders.
“I’ve expressed my view that I wouldn’t bring those charges if I was a prosecutor,” he said in the interview. “But let’s let the system work. And what I don’t want to do as a leader is undermine everything that is good about America, which is our criminal justice system.”
Hutchinson served as a prosecutor, a member of Congress and an administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration prior to being elected as Arkansas governor for two terms. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former Trump spokesperson, succeeded him.
In the early years of his governorship, Hutchinson blocked Syrian refugees from entering the state and resumed executions. Amid the pandemic, he signed a bill into law that prohibited the state from enforcing mask mandates but in 2021, he praised President Joe Biden’s pandemic-related policies, according to Business Insider.
Then in 2021, he signed a near-total abortion ban into law. The same year, he vetoed a bill that would ban transgender youth from receiving gender-related medical interventions.
