Eric Holder Says He’s “Thinking About” Running for President in 2020

Former Attorney General Eric Holder stopped by The Late Show on Monday (July 23) and addressed speculation that he’ll run for president in 2020.

After host Stephen Colbert shared a tweet from White House reporter April Ryan stating that Holder is considering running for president, the crowd erupted in applause. “Yeah, I’m thinking about it,” Holder confirmed. “What I’ve said is that I’d make a determination sometime early next year.”

“My focus, really, now is on 2018. The midterms, and trying to make sure that Democrats take back the Senate, take back the House, and that we do well, importantly, at the state level, so that we’re gonna be picking half the people right now who’ll be doing redistricting in 2021,” he said. “We have a real problem in this country with partisan gerrymandering, so I want to make sure that we elect as many people at the governor level, at the state legislative levels, so that when 2021 comes we have a fair redistricting process.”

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Holder also addressed the recent press conference with Trump and Putin in Helsinki. Colbert asked Holder to explain his tweet that referred to the meeting as “collusion in plain sight.” He said, “When you have a press conference that the whole world is watching, and you have Vlad the Terrible next to you, and you are saying that in essence — not in essence, you’re saying that, ‘I am siding with this guy, the bad guy, as opposed to the unanimous opinions, decisions, analysis of the intelligence community of the United States,’ the nation that you are supposed to lead….that from my perspective is not maybe criminal, but it is certainly collusion.”

While discussing a number of political developments, Holder took on the issue of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. Colbert asked if it’s true that the Obama administration separated families. “There might have been family separations, but it was not as a matter of policy, and to the extent that it happened, there were attempts made by putting these things together,” Holder said of detention centers. “People who were detained could be with their families.”

“What’s different about this policy, as you said, the administration has made the determination they want to use the zero tolerance policy knowing that this would mean the separation of children from people who are charged with misdemeanor crimes, and use this as a matter of policy as a way in which to deter people from coming to the United States. It’s inhumane. It’s cruel. It’s un-American. It’s inconsistent of who we say we are as a nation.”

Watch the interview above.