A US Republican senator has warned that President Donald Trump may face competition to be the political party’s nominee for the 2020 presidential election if he decides to pursue a second term.
“I do believe if the president is running for re-election, if he continues on the path that he’s on, that that’s going to leave a huge swath of voters looking for something else,” Senator Jeff Flake, one of the few Republican lawmakers to publicly condemn Trump, said Sunday in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
“If he’s the Republican nominee again, we’re likely to see an independent candidate” in the November 2020 presidential election, said Flake, who announced in October that he was retiring in late 2018.
“He’s probably inviting a Republican challenge as well” for the 2020 primaries to tap a nominee for the Republican Party, he warned.
Incumbent presidents are typically considered the presumptive nominee for their party at the end of the first…