This Monday, former President Donald Trump released a statement celebrating booing that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) faced when speaking to the Utah state Republican Party’s organizing convention over the weekend. The fact that a former president of the United States decided to release a formal public statement in support of boos against a sitting United States Senator is staggeringly petty. Trump’s narrow-minded self-obsession is endless.
Trump petulantly commented as follows:
‘So nice to see RINO Mitt Romney booed off the stage at the Utah Republican State Convention. They are among the earliest to have figured this guy out, a stone cold loser!’
Trump weighs in on the party’s 2012 presidential nominee: “So nice to see RINO Mitt Romney booed off the stage at the Utah Republican State Convention. They are among the earliest to have figured this guy out, a stone cold loser!”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 3, 2021
Romney was not “booed off the stage” — it just didn’t happen. In fact, Utah state Republican Party Chairman Derek Brown stepped in and admonished the crowd to quiet down, and Romney subsequently completed his planned remarks. The fact that Trump is so profoundly disconnected from reality that he’s yet again simply unequivocally not telling the truth is wild.
Romney has faced criticism from the pro-Trump elements of the GOP over, among other things, his repeated votes in favor of the conviction of the former president across both of his impeachment trials. In 2020, Romney voted in favor of convicting Trump on a charge of abuse of power after the then-president was caught trying to bribe Ukraine into investigating the Bidens, and earlier this year, Romney — along with six other Republican Senators — voted in favor of convicting Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection after the storming of the Capitol. In 2020, Romney was the only Republican who voted for conviction.
No matter Trump’s obsessive criticism of the Senator, he evidently has at least some supporters. Although other Republican Senators who voted for Trump’s conviction earlier this year faced censure from their home state GOPs, Utah Republicans — by a thin margin — voted down a measure to enact a similar procedural rebuke against Romney during last weekend’s state convention. During that convention, Romney noted during his remarks that he “wasn’t a fan of our last president’s character issues,” which seems generously phrased. Notably, Romney himself was among the many other members of Congress who faced a physical threat from the then-president’s virulent lies when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in January.
A resolution to censure GOP Sen. Mitt Romney for his votes to impeach former President Donald Trump failed Saturday at the Utah Republican Party organizing convention on a 711-798 vote, per @gregclarycnn
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 2, 2021
