Republican presidential candidate Joe Walsh, whose campaign went largely unnoticed nationally, announced Friday that he was officially suspending his campaign — but made sure to take a final shot at “the Cult of Trump” in the process.
“I’m suspending my campaign, but our fight against the Cult of Trump is just getting started,” Walsh wrote in a brief announcement posted on social media Friday. “I’m committed to doing everything I can to defeat Trump and his enablers this November. I can’t do it alone. Join me at joewalsh.org.”
I’m suspending my campaign, but our fight against the Cult of Trump is just getting started. I’m committed to doing everything I can to defeat Trump and his enablers this November. I can’t do it alone. Join me at https://t.co/d40HA9h2Kz.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) February 7, 2020
A former Illinois congressman-turned-radio host, Walsh announced his candidacy in August, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he was running because he believes Trump is “unfit to be president.”
“We’ve got a guy in the White House who is unfit, completely unfit to be president,” Walsh told Stephanopoulos, a former Bill Clinton adviser. “And it stuns me that nobody stepped up. Nobody in the Republican Party has stepped up.”
“I’m running because he’s unfit, somebody needs to step up and there needs to be an alternative,” said Walsh. “The country is sick of this guy’s tantrum, he’s a child…. He lies every time he opens his mouth. Look at what happened this week. The President of the United States is tweeting us into a recession.”
Asked to explain why Republicans stand so strongly behind the president, Walsh said, “Because they’re scared to death. Look, George, this isn’t easy to do. I just sat down with you and said I’m going to run for president. I’m going to challenge this guy. I’m opening up my life to tweets and attacks. Everything I’ve said and tweeted now Trump’s going to go after and his bullies are going to go after.”
“Here’s what I think most of my former colleagues believe: They think Trump’s going to lose in November,” Walsh declared.
"I'm running because he's unfit, somebody needs to step up and there needs to be an alternative. The country is sick of this guy's tantrum, he's a child," Joe Walsh tells @GStephanopoulos when asked about GOP support for Trump https://t.co/bLWbG7aCAU pic.twitter.com/KeFCo7sJmL
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 25, 2019
Rather than leading the nation into a “recession,” as Walsh claimed back in August, Trump’s administration has presided over an economic boom that has continued to defy such pessimistic predictions. As The Daily Wire highlighted Friday, the latest jobs report presents yet more good economic news for Trump as the economy, again, outpaced expectations (formatting adjusted):
In the month of January, 225,000 jobs were added, according to Labor Department figures, far exceeding the Wall Street estimate of 158,000 jobs, CNBCreported. Moreover, according to CNBC, the unemployment rate ticked to 3.6%, “for the right reason as the labor force participation rate increased 0.2 percentage points to 63.4%, matching its highest level since June 2013, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department.” Wages are also on the rise. “Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% over a year ago to $28.44, ahead of estimates for 3% growth,” CNBC noted. “That marked 18 consecutive months of wage gains above 3%, as the initially reported 2.9% for December was revised up to 3%.”
As for Walsh’s seeming certainty that Trump is “going to lose in November,” a recent analysis gives the president a 59.99% chance of winning re-election. “Betting aggregator Oddschecker.com put Trump’s chances at 59.99%, and the site shows that Trump has been soaring in the past few weeks, paralleling national job approval surveys including Gallup and the highly watched RealClearPolitics ‘Trump Job Approval’ average,” the Washington Examiner reported Thursday.