Former South Carolina Governor and Representative Mark Sanford has said he is pondering a run against Donald Trump as a Republican candidate. “Sometimes in life you’ve got to say what you’ve got to say, whether there’s an audience or not for that message,” Sanford told The Post and Courier. “I’m a Republican,” he said. “I think the Republican Party has lost its way.” Sanford and Trump have publicly feuded multiple times, notably after Sanford criticized the Muslim travel ban and when he signed a letter urging Congress to request the president’s tax returns. During his 2018 congressional re-election bid, Sanford was a favorite target of Trump, who reportedly mocked him in a closed-door meeting and hinted at Sanford’s 2009 extramarital affair while speaking at a rally. “The Tallahassee Trail—must be a beautiful place,” Trump said, referencing Sanford’s infamous lie that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was actually visiting his mistress in Argentina, which led to his divorce. “Unfortunately, he didn’t go there.” On the day of Sanford’s primary, Trump tweeted that Sanford was “better off in Argentina,” and asked voters to vote for Katie Arrington instead. Sanford told a crowd in his concession speech that “I stand by every one of those decisions to disagree with the president.”
