Third-party candidate and former GOP Hill staffer, Evan McMullin, says he is in the race to defeat the GOP’s official candidate, Donald Trump.

“What we’re trying to do is earn enough electoral votes [in the Electoral College] to block Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, if the race between both of them is close that we are able to do that by winning one or two states … if not that, then we will be, you know, happy to have prevented someone who I believe is a true authoritarian from taking power in the United States and that is Donald Trump,” McMullan told Austin Petersen, a libertarian activist, journalist, media consultant and entrepreneur. 

McMullin announced his run for president in August. He’s a Utah-born Mormon, a former employee at the CIA and at Goldman Sachs, an advocate for free-trade and an advocate for using immigration to help U.S. companies.

“Our country’s immigration policy should serve its economic interests … Immigrants founded forty percent of the American companies in the Fortune 500. They also founded one half of Silicon Valley’s most successful start-ups. In other words, they help create high-quality jobs for all Americans,” he says at his website.

In contrast, Trump argues that immigration rules should be designed primarily to first help Americans instead of primarily helping employers or federal tax coffers. “On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, the jobs, incomes and security of the American worker will always be my first priority,” Trump has said. “America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”

[My policies] will always put the interests of the American people and American security above all else… no country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first. … We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.

There is much evidence that immigration cuts wages and salaries for Americans, even as it also boosts the overall size of the economy and generates more wealth for investors and more tax revenues for the federal government. 

To run against Trump, McMullin quit his job as staff director of the House Republican Conference. That is an influential job because it allowed him to shape the priorities of all GOP House legislators. He was employed by the committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who is a strong advocate for low-skill immigration.

McMullin’s admission that he’s seeking to defeat Trump came in an Oct. 6 interview with Petersen:

We’re on the ballot or registered as write-in in 34 states. By the time we get to November 8, it will be 40 to 45, and that’s plenty for our strategy, which is not a conventional strategy. We’re not trying to win 270 votes — of course that would be great, but it is just not going to happen. This is a three-month presidential campaign, so what we’re trying to do is earn enough Electoral Votes to block Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if the race between both of them is close that we are able to do that by winning one or two states. So that’s the idea, but if not that, then we will be, you know, happy to have prevented someone who I believe is a true authoritarian from taking power in the United States and that is Donald Trump.

In his interview with Petersen, McMullan also said Trump’s popular plan to enforce popular immigration laws “would hurt our economy… rip apart families…. immigration is an important part of our prosperity and our power … we benefit so much economically and from a national security perspective from that. We need to be friendly to immigration that helps us.”