President Donald Trump unleashed his venom on Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) over the weekend after the failed 2012 presidential candidate suggested that Trump’s conduct with Ukraine was “troubling” and that impeachment might be justified.
In a series of tweets, Trump called Romney “pompous” and suggested that Democrats “are lucky that they don’t have any Mitt Romney types,” according to Breitbart. “They may be lousy politicians, with really bad policies…but they stick together,” Trump said of Dems.
Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019
“Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney”
Trump’s remarks come after Romney tweeted Friday that Trump’s requests of foreign leaders to investigate possible corruption by Joe Biden and his son Hunter were “wrong and appalling.”
“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” Romney later added.
But Trump made it clear that he didn’t appreciate Romney’s criticisms. “Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian [p]resident was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics,” Trump tweeted Saturday.
Republican in name only?
For his part, Romney has been critical of Trump through most of his presidency — with the exception of when he asked for (and received) Trump’s endorsement of his Senate run in 2018.
But while Romney may have some sour grapes that Trump won the White House when he could not do so, it’s clear that Romney dislikes the lack of decorum he perceives in Trump, and he’s taking every opportunity to point it out.
Unfortunately for Romney, Democrats and a very small number of Republican Never-Trumpers are the only ones agreeing with his comments.
The vast majority of Republicans have found reasons to support Trump in spite of — or, more often, because of — his brashness and willingness to say what he thinks is true, even if it’s not politically correct.
As Trump points out whenever Romney criticizes him, his methods — however distasteful to Romney — worked in 2016, while Romney’s methods failed in 2012.
Why should Trump waste a single second doing things the way Romney thinks he should?