Days after hard launching his girlfriend “Mindy” on the campaign trail, Republican U.S. Tim Scott announced he his dropping out of the 2023 presidential race.

The announcement on a Fox News program was apparently so sudden that some staff only found out while watching the show, the AP reports.

When talking about which candidates would be on the next debate stage, after Scott first told the host he was preparing to get back on the trail, Scott said “I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters…are telling me ‘not now Tim,” he told host Trey Gowdy, who looked visibly surprised. “So I’m going to respect the voters,” Scott shared.

“I’m trying to process this information, and I’m trying to do it on live television, so forgive me,” Gowdy responded. “You are the highest-ranking African-American Republican politician in the country…[what does it say] about the Republican Party that someone with that resume is suspending his presidential campaign?”

The South Carolina senator, who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2013, had shown some departures from his party in recent months. He criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his administrations’s Black history standards, which included the guidance that “slaves developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“There is no silver lining” to slavery, Scott remarked at the time.

Despite Scott’s credentials, he had been polling in sixth place among other Republicans vying for the White House.