#Larry Hogan: Trump cabinet member urged me to run in Republican primaries

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan appeared to say Sunday that a current member of President Trump’s cabinet urged him to challenge Trump in this year’s Republican primaries.

Hogan, a centrist Republican and Trump critic, did not identify the person during a Sunday morning interview on CNN.

“This was back when there was a lot of speculation and other people that were strongly encouraging me. But, you know, one of them was currently in administration and one of them has since left the administration, but I don’t want to get into the specifics of those conversations,” Hogan said.

The Post reached out to Hogan’s office for clarification, but a representative said they would let his remark speak for itself.

The governor claims in an upcoming book that Trump cabinet members were wooing him to run in the GOP primaries this year.

Some former White House and Trump cabinet officials — such as former National Security Advisor John Bolton and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — have publicly turned against the president, and Hogan’s claim is likely to launch intense gossip and speculation in Washington.

A copy of Hogan’s book, obtained by The Post, contains few hints about the current cabinet secretary’s identity.

Hogan writes that he was astonished by efforts to recruit him to challenge Trump.

“But cabinet secretaries? Encouraging me to consider running against their boss, the president? That one surprised me,” Hogan writes. “But their words, whispered during a visit to the White House, were unequivocal: ‘Thank you,’ one cabinet secretary said. ‘A lot of us appreciate the things you are saying. You have no idea how important it is to the party and to the country that you are saying them.’”

Hogan first said in an interview on Thursday that “a couple” cabinet members urged him to challenge Trump, but he would not name them because he “wouldn’t want to see a couple of friends be fired.”

Hogan told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Sunday he doesn’t support either Trump or Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and that he doesn’t “feel like we have two great choices.”