If you’re just now realizing you haven’t heard much about, or from, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz lately (he’s shown above, along with Megan McCain of “The View”) and wondered why — you’re not alone.

Schultz had said he was exploring a 2020 presidential campaign as a “centrist independent.” But he announced this past Wednesday he’s taking the summer off from further exploration of a potential run.

That’s because he’s recovering from three back surgeries.

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A source close to Schultz admitted there were staff reductions on his team as he’s moved away from the campaign trail this summer, as CNN and other outlets reported.

Earlier this year, Schultz declared he would explore running against President Donald Trump in 2020. But he hadn’t announced any formal presidential run. He was light on policy specifics and he had largely vanished from public view over the past few months.

On Wednesday, he attributed that to the back pain he’s been experiencing.

“While I was in Arizona, I unfortunately experienced acute back pain that required me to cut my travels short. Over the following two months, I underwent three separate back surgeries,” Schultz wrote in a letter to supporters, as CNN and others noted.

“Today, I am feeling much better, and my doctors foresee a full recovery so long as I rest and rehabilitate. I have decided to take the summer to do just that.”

Schultz also said “the American people deserve so much more from our elected officials.”

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He tucked in a reference that he would be “back in touch” with his supporters after the end of the summer — after Labor Day.

As author and analyst Jeff Greenfield wrote in Politico Magazine about this development, “The best response to Howard Schultz’s suspension of his moribund presidential campaign came well before it even began. Back in 1933, when told that former President Calvin ‘Silent Cal’ Coolidge had died, Dorothy Parker replied, ‘How could they tell?'”

“Really? The coffee guy wants to be president? Just because you had one profitable insight — people will overpay for coffee — doesn’t mean you can run the world.”

Interestingly, some of Hollywood’s most vocal liberals had taken to Twitter early in 2019 for a collective meltdown over the news that Schultz might seek the presidency as an independent. That move would have potentially taken votes away from the Democrat nominee, whoever that person might be.

Even late-night host Bill Maher had said he disliked the fact that Schultz had a background in private business, rather than in government.

“Really? The coffee guy wants to be president? Just because you had one profitable insight — people will overpay for coffee — doesn’t mean you can run the world. Gov’t is a different animal — can we please get a pro in there?” the comedian tweeted earlier this year.

Liberal comedian and host Stephen Colbert, for his part, said on his show that he was sick of billionaires running for president.

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