Free Republic

On election night last November, Sen. Mitt Romney watched the early returns and developed "a pit in his stomach" at then-President Donald Trump's strong performance in early states, an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker said. In fact, the numbers were "surprisingly good" for Trump, with now-President Joe Biden underperforming in Florida's Miami-Dade County, where Democratic presidential nominees need to perform strongly in order to capture the populous swing state. That night, Romney told his family that Trump would be victorious in the presidential election, the excerpt from "I Alone Can...

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Thursday on “The Axe Files” podcast that President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud seem dubious because “the president said before the election that if he were to lose, it would be because of voter fraud.” Romney said, “At this stage, we haven’t heard any evidence of a widespread voter fraud effort that would result in a change in the outcome of the election.”

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney on Sunday called for the country to "get behind" President-elect Joe Biden and said he has seen no evidence of widespread voter fraud, even as President Donald Trump has pushed for election-related lawsuits and refused to concede the election. "I think we get behind the new president, unless for some reason that's overturned, we get behind the new president and wish him the very best," Romney, who was the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." While CNN and other networks projected Saturday that Biden will become the 46th President...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined protesters marching in Washington, D.C., in response to the death of George Floyd on Sunday as demonstrations continue to sweep the country amid calls for police reform. Videos and photos of the event showed Romney walking in the street while wearing a mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which health officials have warned could spike as a result of the massive demonstrations around the country. In an interview with NBC, Romney explained that "many voices" needed to join together and stand against racism in the U.S. "We need a voice against racism. We...

Senate Republicans could convict, or threaten to convict, thereby pressuring Trump to resign. They could even work out a deal by which they acquit in exchange for Trump not seeking a second term. Each of these options would leave the Republicans in need of a compromise candidate with very little time left on the clock. Republicans would need someone who understood the requirements of a national campaign, someone with widespread (and largely positive) name recognition, and someone on the record opposing both Trump and Trumpism. Senator Mitt Romney is all of those things. Running Romney would immediately alienate the Trump...

Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) public battles with President Trump are taking a toll on his relationship with fellow GOP senators, with many resenting the implication that they’re afraid of standing up to the president. Romney has replaced retired Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) as the go-to senator for voicing dissension within the Senate GOP ranks when Trump finds himself in hot water. That distinction has made Romney one of the most high-profile freshman Republican senators in recent years, but it has also fueled grumbling among his colleagues. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of Trump’s biggest defenders, told...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Monday condemned President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops in northern Syria, stating the move is a “betrayal” of the Kurds. “The President’s decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal. It says that America is an unreliable ally; it facilitates ISIS resurgence; and it presages another humanitarian disaster,” Romney, a frequent Trump critic, wrote on Twitter.

Mitt Romney — not for the first time — has reversed field when it comes to Donald Trump. This time, his change of heart is a good thing. The former Massachusetts governor, now a first-term US senator from Utah, has emerged as the most prominent Congressional Republican to question Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, implicitly supporting an impeachment inquiry. Being Mitt, his comments have been carefully calibrated: he is “deeply troubled” rather than outraged; he has called on other members of his party to “search their hearts and do what’s right” rather than supporting a particular course of action. But even...

Appearing Wednesday at The Atlantic’s annual ideas festival, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) described the newly-released transcript of a conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as “troubling.” MCKAY COPPINS: The White House just released the call summary between President Trump and the president of Ukraine. What was your reaction? You’ve read it, I assume. SEN. MITT ROMNEY: I have. My reaction was the same as I had a view days ago, which is this remains deeply troubling and we’ll see where it leads. The first reaction is troubling. COPPINS: In the summary that we saw, did that...

One outspoken Republican condemned President Trump’s suggestion that he’d be open to accepting foreign assistance in a presidential campaign. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, said Thursday that it was “simply unthinkable for a candidate for president to accept that involvement, to encourage it, to participate with it in any way, shape, or form.” “It would strike at the very heart of our democracy,” Romney said.

Sen. Mitt Romney said Friday he may never be ready to endorse President Donald Trump's re-election, but wouldn't give the race's Democratic front-runner, Joe Biden, "more than a 50-50 shot" of winning the White House. "I think the attitude here has got to be the same as across the country, which is the president will surely be the Republican nominee and an incumbent in a growing economy is more likely to win than to lose. But it's not a sure thing," he said. Romney said if the Democrats nominate "a strong contender, anything's possible." But he declined to say whether...

Republicans in Congress are confused about how to respond to President Trump’s multi-front trade war. With strong free-trade ideals but also cognizance of political and geopolitical concerns about Chinese competition, they stand paralyzed and inert. Mitt Romney can help them break out of their slumber. Romney, now a senator from Utah, is uniquely positioned to lead his Republican colleagues on trade policy. He is unquestionably a leader of the party’s business and establishment wings. Those elements are strongly opposed to trade restriction, and deeply uneasy about Trump’s tariff wars, and they want nothing more than a quick end to all...

Sen. Mitt Romney warned Friday that President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs against Mexico were the wrong approach and could harm Americans more than they help curtail illegal immigration. “A tariff targeting Mexico that negatively impacts our own interests will only end in a waiting game of increasingly harmful consequence to the American people,” Romney said.

Ask a Republican elected official in Utah if they're endorsing a second term for the sitting president of their own party and the answer should be obvious, shouldn't it? Apparently not if the president running for re-election is Donald Trump. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, answered that question from CNN's Jake Tapper recently by joking he wasn't ready to say yet if he's going to write in the name of his wife, Ann, in the 2020 presidential election, as he did in 2016.

Utah Senator and one-time Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Sunday said fellow Republican lawmaker, Congressman Justin Amash was "courageous" for publicly stating his belief that President Donald Trump had "engaged in impeachable conduct," but that he didn't believe in moving forward with the process of removing the president from office. Amash issued a lengthy Twitter statement Saturday, claiming that after reading the full report on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice by the president, that Trump had indeed taken actions worthy of impeachment.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney says he's "sickened" by the level of dishonesty the special counsel found in President Donald Trump's administration. The one-time GOP presidential nominee tweeted that it's "good news" Trump was not charged with wrongdoing in the investigation. But Romney, who's now a senator from Utah, was critical of what he called the "pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection" at the highest levels of the administration, "including the president."

Newly-elected Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Monday called for conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to resign from the House because of his remarks questioning whether white supremacy is "offensive." “I think he ought to step aside and I think Congress ought to make it very clear he has no place there,” Romney told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday. A spokeswoman for Romney confirmed the statement. Romney is the latest high-profile Republican voice to condemn King’s comments made in an interview with The New York Times in which he said, “white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language...

No, even though the votes from last week aren’t even all counted yet, it is, of course, time to move on to the next election. And while the discussion so far has focused on which Democrats are running and who among them is best positioned to defeat President Trump, I’ve got the perfect candidate to dethrone the Donald. It’s Mitt Romney. Or maybe Jeff Flake. Ben Sasse? Sure, whatever. Any of them will do. Because I’m not suggesting that any of these vocal Trump critics from within the president’s own party — including Massachusetts’ re-gift to Utah — run as...

Mitt Romney, after announcing his Republican bid for Senate in Utah, called for “action” following the Florida high school shooting that left 17 dead. Romney called the shooting “senseless, debased evil.” “I think we can’t just sit and wait and hope for things to get better,” the former GOP presidential candidate said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. “It is wrong and unacceptable for children in our schools to fear for their lives.”

Mitt Romney blasted the Republican Party on Saturday for not doing more to stop presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that the prospects for the party are bleak. During a discussion in Park City, Utah, where Romney is hosting his annual conservative summit, the 2012 presidential nominee singled out Trump’s former rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), the last two candidates to drop out of the race against Trump. "Ted Cruz was basically praising Donald Trump through the whole process," Romney told discussion host and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. And Kasich “was in well after the time...