Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), the conservative talk-show host and prominent “tea party” figure, on Wednesday called President Donald Trump an “unfit conman” and a “racial arsonist” and urged a primary challenge for the Republican nomination next year. 

Walsh also apologized both for his own heated rhetoric over the years and for helping to elect Trump in 2016. 

Writing in The New York Times, Walsh said:

Walsh voted for Trump in 2016.

“If Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket,” he wrote on Twitter, later saying it wasn’t a literal call to arms but a call to protest.

However, since the election, he’s turned into a persistent Trump critic from the right. 

In the Times, he argued that Trump isn’t a conservative and that he’s vulnerable not just because he’s unfit for office but because of his poor record. 

“He’s reckless on fiscal issues; he’s incompetent on the border; he’s clueless on trade; he misunderstands executive power; and he subverts the rule of law,” Walsh wrote. “It’s his poor record that makes him most worthy of a primary challenge.”

He noted that former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who is running against Trump in the Republican primary, is a centrist challenger. Instead, Walsh said, Trump could be vulnerable to a conservative opponent in the primary:   

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Read the full column here. 

On Twitter, Walsh wrote that his column was both a call for someone to run against Trump and an apology for his own role in helping to elect him: 

Walsh was widely praised for the mea culpa: