Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who has not yet entered the 2020 presidential race, would not commit Tuesday to dropping out if his campaign turns out to be a spoiler that helps President Donald Trump get re-elected.
"The issue of being a spoiler, how can you spoil a system that is already broken?" Schultz told CNN's Poppy Harlow during a network-sponsored town hall in Houston. "It's just not working."
He did tell Harlow that if the "math doesn't tally up" over the next three or four months while he takes his message to the American people, then he won't mount a campaign because he "will not do anything, whatsoever, to re-elect Donald Trump. No one wants to see him fired more than me."
However, when pressed about whether he'd drop out if it turned out his campaign was helping Trump, Schultz shifted, saying that the matter is less about him than about giving Americans a "voice they don't have."
"What better expression of our democracy than giving the American people a better choice, a new choice?" he said.
During the town hall, Schultz stuck to his two main talking points, stressing that he believes the two-party political system is broken and Trump needs to be out of office.
Schultz also said that he has the experience and skills that Americans will need to once again trust the government, but he did not offer policy proposals or say specifically how he plans to make the changes, CNN reports.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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