Former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford (R.) announced on Fox News Sunday he will run a primary campaign against President Donald Trump, leading anchor Chris Wallace to ask what the point is.

"You've got to know, you basically have no chance of winning the Republican nomination, so why run for president?" Wallace asked Sanford.

"I think you probably would have said that thing to Donald Trump just a matter of months ago as he faced the likes of Jeb Bush and others," Sanford responded, referring to Trump's 2015 entry into the GOP primary.

"Do you honestly think you have a serious chance?" Wallace asked.

"I'm saying you never know," Sanford said. "I've listed my goals: My primary goal is to say, let's go out in force and try to create a conversation on that which is not being talked about in this presidential cycle."

"Once every four years we have a chance to have a national debate on where we're going next as Republicans and Democrats and as Americans, and the thing that has been lacking in this debate has been an earnest and real conversation on debt and deficits and government spending," he added.

Sanford also said he wants to have a conversation about "what it means to be a Republican," arguing that the Republican Party has lost its way "on a couple of different fronts."

"One of the hallmarks of the Republican Party and the conservative movement has always been, how much do we spend?" he said. "It was Milton Friedman's notion that the ultimate measure of government is how much it spends. I think, as a party, we have lost our way."

He blamed Trump for Republicans' willingness to increase the debt, citing how Trump said he was "the king of debt" when he was a businessman.

"The president has called himself ‘the king of debt.' He has a familiarity and a comfort level with debt that I think is ultimately leading us in the wrong direction," Sanford said. "The numbers are astounding."