Howard Schultz, the executive chairman of Starbucks, is stepping down from his position and is saying a run for the White House may be in his future.

“I want to be truthful with you without creating more speculative headlines,” he told The New York Times on Monday about his departure. “For some time now, I have been deeply concerned about our country — the growing division at home and our standing in the world.”

Schultz has been with Starbucks for 36 years, previously holding the position of CEO. He’ll leave the company later this month.

Schultz, 64, also suggested in a statement to CNN that he was open to a presidential run. “I intend to think about a range of options, and that could include public service, but I’m a long way from making any decisions about the future,” he said.

If he were to run, Schultz would no doubt shoot for the Democratic presidential ticket.

He is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, and he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.

Under his leadership, Starbucks has become a political brand. The company announced last year that it would hire 10,000 refugees over a five-year period; the company also recently made headlines for days with its controversial sensitivity training for employees, after an incident in a Philadelphia Starbucks in which two black men were arrested.

Starbucks has rapidly grown under Schultz. The brand had only 11 stores in the ’80s — but it now has 28,000 stores in 77 countries. Its market value is nearly $80 billion.

Related: ‘Ingraham Angle’ Gives Exclusive Look at Starbucks’ Racial ‘Sensitivity Training’

Schultz himself has been outspoken about a number of issues, including “racial inequality.”

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“We realize that four hours of training is not going to solve racial inequity in America,” Schultz told CNN last week about Starbucks’ recent training session. “[But] we need to have the conversation. We need to start.”

In a speech to Starbucks shareholders in 2016, Schultz also said, “The American Dream can’t be only accessible to people of privilege who are white and live in the right zip code.”

Once Schultz has officially departed Starbucks, Myron E. Ullman, the former CEO of J.C. Penney, will become chair of the company’s board, while Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, will become the vice chair.

In an email to employees, Schultz said he was living the “American dream.”

“I still feel like a kid from Brooklyn who grew up in public housing,” he said. “I am living the American dream.”

Related: Starbucks’ Stand on the Travel Ban

For anyone that doubts the reality of Schultz’s political ambitions, he’s already been criticizing the current Democratic Party in media interviews.

“It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the Left. I say to myself, ‘How are we going to pay for these things?’ in terms of things like single-payer [health care plans and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “I don’t think that’s realistic.”

He also tackled the national debt in that interview. “I think the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future generations,” Schultz said. “The only way we’re going to get out of that is we’ve got to grow the economy, in my view, 4 percent or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements.”

Asked by CNBC whether he would run for president, he answered, “There’s a lot of things I can do as a private citizen other than run for the presidency of the United States. Let’s just see what happens.”

PopZette editor Zachary Leeman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage image: Howard Schultz Starbucks, CC BY 2.5, by Sillygwailo)