Scott Walker said that "it's just sad in America that we have such poor choices right now" in the general election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. | AP Photo Walker backs away from endorsing Trump

Faced with mounting controversies surrounding his party’s nominee for president, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is backing away from his pledge to support Donald Trump.

In an interview with Madison, Wisconsin’s WKOW, Walker, who dropped out of the GOP race in September 2015, lamented the general-election matchup between presumptive nominees Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.


“It’s just sad in America that we have such poor choices right now,” he said.

Walker, who endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the Wisconsin primary, had previously pledged to support the Republican nominee “whoever that is,” arguing that any GOP candidate would be preferable to Clinton. On Tuesday, however, the Wisconsin governor seemed less certain of his ability to back Trump, pointing to the candidate’s accusations of bias against a Hispanic federal judge as especially troubling.

“He’s not yet the nominee. Officially that won’t happen until the middle of July, and so for me that’s kind of the timeframe,” Walker said. “In particular I want to make sure that he renounces what he says, at least in regards to this judge.”

Still, Walker didn’t back away from his criticisms of Clinton in explaining the difficult position in which he finds himself.

“So we’ve got someone who has systematically lied to the American people and in doing so, in some ways has actually put America’s national security at risk,” Walker said. “And someone who at least of late has been saying things that run directly at odds with our core beliefs and principles in this country.”