WASHINGTON — Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said he has no plans to run for president in 2020, but stopped short of ruling it out entirely in an interview with BuzzFeed News’ AM to DM on Wednesday.
“I am not planning to run for president,” Murphy said, after being asked directly to say yes or no on a 2020 campaign. “I don’t have any plans to go to Iowa or New Hampshire.”
Asked if he would give a “hard no” on a presidential campaign, Murphy reiterated, “I have no plans right now” to run.
Murphy has been floated as a potential presidential contender in 2020, although he said in 2017 that he wasn’t running.
In the interview with AM to DM, Murphy also discussed a Senate resolution he cosponsored to withdraw US military support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, which senators will vote on Wednesday for a second time. In March, the resolution was seven votes short of moving forward.
Murphy told AM to DM he thinks the bill has since gained more support in recent months, especially among Republicans, both because of the increasing numbers of Yemeni civilians being killed in the conflict and because of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
He said the Saudi authorities’ attempts to cover up their involvement in US resident Khashoggi’s death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has also raised questions for members of Congress about Saudi Arabia’s conduct in the war in Yemen.
“Many of my colleagues who believed the Saudis about what they were trying to hit and what they weren’t trying to hit inside Yemen now don’t believe them because they watched them lie to our face about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi,” he said. “So I do think a lot of people have changed their minds about whether we should be in business with the Saudis in Yemen, because they realized that they are just not straight players with us.”
The United Nations’ refugee agency estimates nearly 1,500 Yemeni civilians were killed between August and October this year, and that some 16,000 civilians have died over the course of the conflict.
Another estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) found that around 3,000 people were killed in November alone, and placed the total number of casualties since 2014 at closer to 60,000 people.