By Lindsey Ellefson, CNN

(CNN) -- Rep. Eric Swalwell said Monday morning he is planning to consider a 2020 run for president after the midterms.

"I'm going to do all I can, first, to win my way back to Congress ... and then after the midterms, Poppy, I am going to consider it," Swalwell, a California Democrat, told CNN's Poppy Harlow on "Newsroom." Swalwell has reportedly visited Iowa -- which votes first in the presidential primary season and is a magnet for would-be White House hopefuls -- 10 times over the past year and a half.

Swalwell maintained that his priority is the 2018 midterms, where he is "helping candidates who are stepping up to protect our health care, protect paychecks, and protect the democracy."

The California Democrat accused President Donald Trump of taking "a wrecking ball to just so many freedoms" afforded to Americans like himself, though he also addressed criticism leveled at Democrats.

He responded to young Democratic candidates and lawmakers who have criticized Democratic leadership for being, in Harlow's words, "too old and too white," and those who have pledged not to support Rep. Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats take control of the House in November.

"I'm supporting Nancy Pelosi, but I've heard Nancy Pelosi tell those candidates, 'You do what you have to do,'" he said.

The 37-year-old continued, "I think there's room in our party for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Danny O'Connor and others. I look forward to welcoming them and these are problems that we would love to have because that means we're in the majority and we have to figure out who our speaker's going to be."

"The Democratic Party is going to need to get faces and people who can speak to people in their 40s, to people in their 20s," he said, noting what he said were similarities between the number of fresh, young candidates running now and those "Watergate babies" who "stepped up because they saw what was happening to their country" during Richard Nixon's presidency.

"I'm going to consider it, but again, right now, the best way to cut our time in hell in half is to win Congress, and we shouldn't look beyond that," Swalwell said.