New Hampshire GOP Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday that Donald Trump is no longer “the head of the Republican Party” going into the 2024 election after the former president praised disgraced ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week.
“I literally saw Donald Trump cozying up to Andrew Cuomo,” Sununu told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” referring to the 76-year-old’s claim that the former New York governor handled the COVID-19 pandemic better than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest competitor in the GOP primary.
“I mean, Andrew Cuomo is the punchline to Republican jokes — even Democrats don’t like Andrew Cuomo. And now Trump and Cuomo are best friends,” Sununu added. “That is not the head of the Republican Party. That is not a strong conservative message.”
The 48-year-old governor has been floated as a potential candidate for the Republican nomination and told Fox News he expects to make an announcement “pretty soon.”
On Sunday, Sununu hinted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he may announce “in the next week or two.”
Sununu spoke one day after reports emerged that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence will launch their own presidential campaigns next week in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively.
Christie and Pence both broke with Trump after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election, which the president had said was “rigged.”
In March, Sununu told NBC News’ Chuck Todd that Trump had no chance of securing the 2024 GOP nomination.
“He’s not going to be the nominee. That’s just not going to happen,” the New Hampshire governor said of the former president on “Meet the Press.”
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity to bring forward what the Republican Party — not what we were, not yesterday’s leadership or yesterday’s story, or crying about what happened in November of ’22 — but what we’re going to bring to the table and get done tomorrow, and that’s what America is looking for.
“And so I’m really confident that whoever comes out of the Republican nomination process is going to lead this country and will be able to deliver a win in ’24, and I’ll back them,” Sununu said.
The New Hampshire governor is currently polling at 1%, according to the RealClearPolitics average, along with Christie.
Trump is leading the field at 53.2% support, with DeSantis in a distant second at 22.4% support.
They are followed by former South Carolina Gov. and ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (4.4%), Pence (3.8%), entrepreneur Vivek Ramswamy (2.6%) and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (1.6%).
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has said he will not seek the presidency in 2024, is polling at 1% as well.
Sununu, who has served as governor of the Granite State since 2017, set up his “Live Free or Die” political action committee in February to raise funds for a potential presidential campaign.