Joe Walsh, a former tea party congressman who announced this week he is challenging President Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2020, on Friday took responsibility for helping lay the groundwork for Mr. Trump’s rise in politics.

“I apologize for helping to create the environment that put such a cruel, bigoted, unfit con man in the White House,” Mr. Walsh said on Fox Business Network. “I feel sort of responsible for this — I do.”

Mr. Walsh, who has also been a radio host, was elected to Congress in the tea party wave of 2010 and represented Illinois’ 8th Congressional District for one term before losing in 2012.

“We’ve got somebody in the White House … who believes he’s above the law,” he said. “We’ve got somebody in the White House who puts his own interest[s] ahead of the country’s interest[s] at every single turn. That should concern all of us.”

Since Mr. Walsh announced he was entering the race, critics have pointed to a number of his old tweets, including comments that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and that Islam is a “doctrine of hatred and death.”

He said calling Mr. Obama a Muslim was a lie, for which he apologizes.

“I am happy to come on and go through any of my 65,000 tweets and if I need to apologize for anything I’ve tweeted, I will,” he said. “When has this president … ever apologized for anything?”

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld is the other most prominent candidate challenging Mr. Trump within the Republican Party, and former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina is also weighing a long-shot bid.

The president has dubbed them the “Three Stooges.”

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