Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.) made the case for President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE to face a conservative primary challenger in an opinion piece for The New York Times on Wednesday.

Walsh, who has become a vocal critic of the president, wrote that he voted for Trump in 2016 not because he supported the Republican nominee but because “he wasn’t Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonFox News poll: Biden ahead of Trump in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Ohio Trump, Biden court Black business owners in final election sprint The power of incumbency: How Trump is using the Oval Office to win reelection MORE.”

“But I soon realized that I couldn’t support him because of the danger he poses to the country, especially the division he sows at every chance, culminating a few weeks ago in his ugly, racist attack on four minority congresswomen,” Walsh wrote.

“The fact is, Mr. Trump is a racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base and advance his electoral prospects,” he added.

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Walsh wrote that Trump is “unfit for office” and listed issues that should make Republicans view Trump as a liability.

“No matter his flag-hugging, or his military parades, he’s no patriot. In front of the world, he sides with Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich PutinPutin nominated for Nobel Peace Prize Navalny released from hospital after suspected poisoning Ex-Trump national security adviser says US leaders 'making it easy for Putin' to meddle MORE over our own intelligence community. That’s dangerous,” the Republican wrote. “He encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he refuses to take foreign threats seriously as we enter the 2020 election. That’s reckless. For three years, he has been at war with our federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as he embraces tyrants abroad and embarrasses our allies. That’s un-American.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld William (Bill) WeldRalph Gants, chief justice of Massachusetts supreme court, dies at 65 The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden visits Kenosha | Trump's double-voting suggestion draws fire | Facebook clamps down on election ads Biden picks up endorsements from nearly 100 Republicans MORE (R) is challenging Trump “from the center,” Walsh noted.

“But the president is more vulnerable to a challenge from the right. I’m on the right, and I’m hugely disappointed that challenge hasn’t yet materialized,” the former lawmaker wrote.

Walsh, who pushed to “restrain executive power and reduce the debt” while serving in Congress, said that the president is not a conservative.

“He’s reckless on fiscal issues; he’s incompetent on the border; he’s clueless on trade; he misunderstands executive power; and he subverts the rule of law. It’s his poor record that makes him most worthy of a primary challenge,” Walsh wrote.

The former GOP congressman left office in 2013 and became a nationally syndicated conservative radio host.

Despite originally supporting the president's campaign, Walsh wrote that Trump has made him see “the worst and ugliest iteration of views I expressed for the better part of a decade.”

In 2016, Walsh wrote that former President Obama “hates Israel” because "he has always been" a Muslim at heart.

He said at the time that many Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators agree with his assessment of Obama’s religion but are afraid of publicly criticizing it.

Now, Walsh wrote for the Times that “there's no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.”