Former Attorney General Eric Holder told “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert that he’s “considering” running for President in 2020, but won’t make an official decision until after the 2018 midterm elections.
Holder has been rumored as a potential Barack Obama-backed challenger for the Democratic nomination, but the controversial former AG is thought to have too much baggage for a national race, particularly having presided over a gun-running scheme that left at least one ATF agent dead.
Holder, however, doesn’t seem to believe there are many hurdles to national office.
Colbert broached the subject by reading Holder a tweet from White House reporter April Ryan, citing “sources close to Holder” as saying he was “seriously considering” a run, Politico reports.
“I’m thinking about it and what I’ve said is that I’d make a determination sometime early next year,” Holder said.” “My focus, really, now is on 2018, the midterms and trying to make sure that Democrats take back the Senate, take back the House, and that we do well, importantly, at the state level.”
The audience broke out into applause which, Politico says, Holder “paused for a second to soak up.”
When Holder says he’s working on the midterm elections, he actually means he’s working on the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a national effort to “break” GOP gerrymandering, presumably so that Democrats can immediately redraw districts to favor their own interests.