Gov. John Hickenlooper laughed at the suggestion but wouldn’t rule out a run for president in 2020 in an appearance Monday evening on CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett show.

He also suggested that the furor raised by President Donald Trump’s immigration policies – both the administration’s directives and rumored next steps – should encourage Congress to buckle down and come up with a fix to a system nearly everyone agrees is broken.

Hickenlooper shrugged and gave a brief chuckle when Burnett noted that the Colorado Democrat was reportedly one of four potential Trump challengers targeted by chief White House strategist Steve Bannon for opposition research.

“If it’s bad, they’re going to find it,” she said. Then she asked, “Do you think you could beat Donald Trump if you ran?”

“Just to help Mr. Bannon,” responded the notoriously self-effacing Hickenlooper, “last year I did put out a so-called memoir – I like to think I’m too young to really write a memoir – but ‘My Life in Beer and Politics,’ it was called, ‘The Opposite of Woe.’ It’s got every bad thing, and there’s a lot of them, I’ve ever done, so I don’t think they have to worry too much about me coming at them from their blind side.”

“But it’s on the table?” she pressed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I think there’s a lot of things on the table.”

Hickenlooper elaborated on what he later termed “strange times” in national and state politics.

“I think the key in the next couple of years is to figure out how do we get this – with all the turmoil going on, how do we keep our focus and move the country forward and figure out where are those lines that should not be crossed, I think, both between states and the federal government,” he said.

The rules might be jumbled for a while, Hickenlooper suggested.

“You’re going to see a whole lot more Democratic governors saying that we believe in states’ rights and that the federal government shouldn’t come in and impose these burdens on us. And I think you’re going to see more Republican governors saying, ‘Hey, don’t come and tell us you’re going to cut back on Medicaid expansion’, right?”

Burnett also asked Hickenlooper what the Trump administration’s new immigration policies could mean for Colorado.

There’s too much uncertainty, the governor responded, noting that some purported policies could be tremendously expensive to implement.

“We’re under 3-percent unemployment now,” he said. “In agriculture, in construction, even in tech, we’re not sure how many undocumented people are working in these (areas). This might be the perfect time to look at Congress to try and address and find what is the right compromise, and let’s really solve this problem that’s been haunting us for 20 years.”

Burnett also asked about Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented immigrant who took refuge last week along with her four children, who are all U.S. citizens, at the First Unitarian Church in Denver.

“It is hard to imagine going into a church and a sanctuary like that and dragging someone out,” Hickenlooper said. He added that he was concerned about aggressive deportation policies. “There are serious costs to our economy and to the fabric of our community.”

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com