Clay Aiken on Donald Trump’s Run for President: “Anybody Who Discounts Him Is Shortsighted”

Donald Trump’s run for President has been making headlines, but former political candidate and Apprentice star Clay Aiken says don’t count him out yet.

“Anybody who discounts him is shortsighted,” said Aiken, who ran for a North Carolina congressional seat in 2014. “I don’t think anybody should discount him. Nobody thought that we would see him in the position he is in right now. He is certainly the frontrunner with no signs of that fading.” Aiken said that Trump’s entry into the Presidential race will give the real estate mogul a chance to shake things up politically.

“I think he has a really great opportunity — even if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination — to do something I think the country has needed for a long time, which is to try to break this stranglehold of the two-party system,” he said. “I kind of hope he decides to stick with it and maybe give people another option outside of the Republicans and Democrats.”

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Back in March, when Aiken was promoting his Esquire docu-series, The Runner Up, he said Trump would be “another colorful cast member” in the Republican race for President.

“He tends to not like to do anything he is not going to be successful at — sticking his neck out,” Aiken added. “I like him as a person. He has been nice to me and supported me, but I think he’s got maybe less of a chance than I did.”

This story originally appeared on Billboard.com.