Mitt Romney critical of Senate colleagues in forthcoming book: ‘Don’t know that I can disrespect someone more’
Senators, beware: Mitt Romney will judge your workout.
The usually tight-lipped 76-year-old Utah Republican has some biting takes on his peers, according to a forthcoming book — excerpts of which were published minutes after Romney announced Wednesday he would not seek re-election next year.
In “Romney: A Reckoning,” due out Oct. 24 and excerpted by The Atlantic, author McKay Coppins describes the 2012 Republican presidential nominee as someone “fascinated by the strange social ecosystem that governed the Senate,” going so far as to hang out in the chamber’s gym “studying his colleagues like he was an anthropologist, jotting down his observations in his journal.”
Among those observations: Then-Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), walked on the treadmill in loafers and suit pants. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) went so slowly on the exercise bikes that Romney couldn’t resist peeking at their settings.
“Durbin was set to 1 and Brown to 8. :) :). My setting is 15—not that I’m bragging,” he noted in his journal, according to Coppins.
Romney also had harsh words for some of his fellow Republicans, lambasting some recent arrivals as flagrant political opportunists scared to cross former President Donald Trump.
“I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney told Coppins, recounting that he had crossed paths with the Ohio Republican years earlier and been impressed by his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” and its thoughtful musings about the GOP’s future without falling under the spell of the future 45th president.
But when Vance ran for Senate in 2022 and echoed some of Trump’s wildest attacks on Democrats and President Biden, Romney began to sour on him.
“I do wonder, how do you make that decision? How can you go over a line so stark as that — and for what?” the septuagenarian vented. “It’s not like you’re going to be famous and powerful because you became a United States senator. It’s like, ‘Really? You sell yourself so cheap?’”
Another object of Romney’s ire is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), part of a group the Utahan said had “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution” by objecting to the 2020 election results.
“Josh Hawley is one of the smartest people in the Senate, if not the smartest, and Ted Cruz [R-Texas] could give him a run for his money,” Romney told Coppins, adding: “They know better” than to believe Trump’s claim that massive fraud cost him a second term.
A spokesperson for Hawley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Romney’s years-long criticism of Trump, dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign, has made him a pariah among many Republican voters — though not, he insists, among his Republican colleagues.
“Almost without exception,” Romney told Coppins, “they shared my view of the president.” One of Romney’s fellows allegedly told him Trump “has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.”
One of those colleagues, Coppins writes, was Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who largely indulged Trump in public while denigrating him to Romney as an “idiot” behind closed doors.
“You’re lucky,” McConnell told Romney at one point. “You can say the things that we all think. You’re in a position to say things about him that we all agree with but can’t say.”
During Trump’s first impeachment trial, in early 2020, McConnell appeared impressed with the case made by House Democrats that Trump had committed high crimes and misdemeanors by threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the Kyiv government investigated the Biden family’s dealings in the country.
“They nailed him,” the Kentuckian told Romney at one point, according to Coppins.
“Well, the defense will say that Trump was just investigating corruption by the Bidens,” Romney said he responded.
“If you believe that,” McConnell allegedly answered, “I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”
McConnell told Coppins he did not recall the conversation with Romney and the quotes did not match his thinking at the time.
Romney was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump in the first impeachment trial — becoming the first senator from an impeached president’s party to do so and ignoring the entreaties of his 2012 running mate, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, to acquit.
Looking ahead to 2024, Romney told Coppins that he had approached Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who is also up for re-election next year, this past April about forming a new political party. While Manchin has publicly mused about an independent bid for the presidency, Romney said his idea was better and warned that any significant third-party candidacy would hand the White House back to Trump.
“Today I’d say 50-50,” Romney, who claims to have written in his wife Ann for president in 2016, told the Washington Post in a separate interview discussing his looming retirement. “If I had to bet, I’d say it could go either way. So much can happen between now and then.”
