Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) will not be running for another term in the Senate, meaning he’s exiting elected office at the beginning of 2025. In the meantime, new comments from the Senator have been circulating that show a differing Republican perspective on critical, present-day issues for the party. To journalist McKay Coppins, Romney condemned Mike Pence — formerly vice president alongside Donald Trump — for so consistently following along with the then-president’s behavior.
Discussing Pence, Romney said that nobody had proven themselves “more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence.” The former vice president is now actually running for the Republican presidential nomination against Donald Trump himself and a slew of others — though available polling data strongly suggests that neither Pence nor anyone else who’s not named Trump is going to get anywhere close to the Republican nomination. That’s absent some kind of dramatic upheaval to the race, like the perhaps unlikely though technically not impossible event of Trump soon becoming incapacitated in tandem with one of his four criminal cases.
Romney actually also recently spoke against the idea Pence can actually win the nomination. Like most candidates in the Republican primary who aren’t Trump, Pence is normally in the single digits in polling. “I think he’s running for other reasons,” Romney said. “One, to repair his legacy… What he’s saying is important to be said… I’m glad he’s running and saying those things. I respect that.”
In an interview for CNN, Pence responded to Romney’s criticism of his actions during most of Trump’s time in office. Pence remains evidently publicly insistent on the sincerity of his run for the Republican nomination and isn’t stepping away from the contest… yet. “I’m incredibly proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration,” Pence told CNN’s Jake Tapper, eventually adding: “Mitt Romney has no idea what I was doing in the administration.” Those remarks sound a bit like Pence is thinking of behind-the-scenes maneuvers he possibly undertook to stop Trump from taking even more destructive actions. What aren’t you telling us, Mike?
2024 GOP candidate Mike Pence responds to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) saying Pence was able to “ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly” as Trump’s vice president. @CNNSotu #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/nRhYc8hgu2
— CNN (@CNN) September 17, 2023
