Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said that a third-party candidate is “very likely” if the current Democratic and Republican front-runners — President Biden and former President Trump — are the only other options.

“But they’re only willing to consider this if the nominees are Biden and Trump and 70 percent of Americans do not want those choices,” Hogan said on CBS News.

Hogan is the honorary chairman of “No Labels,” a nonpartisan political group that has been preparing to launch a third-party candidate.

Democrats fear such a run would pull votes from Biden and make a second Trump presidency more likely. David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, called out Hogan on the repercussions of a third-party candidate during a Sunday appearance on CNN.

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“Honestly, doesn’t that pave the way for Donald Trump? Doesn’t that siphon votes from Joe Biden and elect the person that you have criticized so heavily?” Axelrod said.

Hogan said the third-party candidate would “pull just as many votes from Donald Trump as Joe Biden.”

“And if most of the voters don’t want A or B, we have an obligation to give them C, I mean, for the good of the country,” he added to CNN.

During his CBS interview Tuesday, the former governor also weighed in on the first 2024 Republican presidential debate scheduled for Wednesday, which Trump said this weekend he would skip. Hogan said Trump’s absence gives other candidates a chance to “talk about important issues.”

“Most people in the country want to hear about the economy, they want to hear about crime in our cities, they want to hear about improving education,” Hogan said. “They’re concerned about the war in Ukraine. There are a lot of important issues out there.”

Hogan added that he is not personally “focused on any kind of independent run. I’m focused on trying to get a Republican to win that nomination.”

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