Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:48 pm
Mitt Romney impressed the mainstream press today when he took to the stage and from his high perch as a rare breed of civilized Republican, took down Donald Trump. Or tried to. Because you see Donald Trump is a vulgarian and he is rude and he says horrible things. Mitt Romney is so above all of that y’all.
When reminded that he begged for Donald Trump’s endorsement in 2012, Romney claimed he never would have “accepted” it if Trump had been like that then, “If Trump had said 4 years ago the things he says today about the KKK, Muslims, Mexicans, disabled, I would NOT have accepted his endorsement.
If Trump had said 4 years ago the things he says today about the KKK, Muslims, Mexicans, disabled, I would NOT have accepted his endorsement
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— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 3, 2016
But the problem is that in 2011, Donald Trump was a birther. He claimed of President Obama’s birth certificate that “maybe it says he’s a Muslim.”
Did Donald do this in secret and maybe Mitt knew nothing of it? Why, no. Donald did this on the View, he did it on Fox News. He put it out there so that it was undeniable.
http://nation.foxnews.com/donald-trump/2011/03/30/trump-obama-maybe-hes-musl
Transcript from Fox News (my bold):
BILL O’REILLY: Now, when you were on “The View” and they didn’t walk out, which they should have because they walked out on me and they should have stayed. You were way, way worse than I was on “The View.” You were hammering the birth certificate.
Now, we very early on did an investigation about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. What “The Factor” found out was there were two announcements the week he was born in both Honolulu newspapers saying that he was born, OK. That is impossible — that is impossible to make happen if he had not been born in the hospital. So therefore, I just put it to bed. I said he was born in Honolulu. The two newspapers documented it. His mother was a hippy. His father was a guy from Kenya who split. There couldn’t have been a sophisticated — what is he, Baby Jesus? — there was a sophisticated conspiracy to smuggle this baby back into the country? So I just dismissed it. But you made a big deal of it.
DONALD TRUMP: Bill, I grew up with Wall Street geniuses. What they do in terms of fraud and how they change documents and I will tell you something. If you notice those dates were three days later. Here is what I ask people. Who puts announcements? Here are two poor people, a man and a woman with no money, they have a baby. There’s announcements in the newspaper?
O’REILLY: The grandparents did it.
TRUMP: Excuse me. The grandparents. Nelson Rockefeller doesn’t put announcements.
O’REILLY: Sure, there are birth announcements all the time.
TRUMP: I have never seen one.
O’REILLY: Really? They are common.
TRUMP: I’ve never seen one.
O’REILLY: But why is this important to you?
TRUMP: Because if you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was born…
O’REILLY: Oh come on. Do you really feel this about him?
TRUMP: You know, I started off by saying — and I always do and I did on the “The View.” I’m a very smart guy. I went to the best college. I had good marks. I was a very smart guy, good student and all that stuff. Because what they do to the birthers, which is a term I hate because a lot of these birthers are just really quality people that just want the truth. What they do to the birthers is unbelievable to a point where people are afraid to talk about this subject. They are afraid to confront you or anybody about this subject.
O’REILLY: Do you think it’s an important subject?
TRUMP: Listen, I have a birth certificate. I have my birth certificate. And in fact, they said the one I gave yesterday wasn’t good enough. So I actually got the one from the Health Department, which is the perfect one. Because they were saying the one I gave yesterday wasn’t good enough, so I got the other. People have birth certificates. He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.
End transcript.
So, kind of hard to miss Trump’s birtherism. Also hard to claim he’s a secret Democrat after that.
It’s not as if we suspected Mitt Romney had suddenly grown integrity, but in case you were wondering, he has not. He’s just playing high-minded Republican leader of the party because they don’t have anyone else who can pull it off.
The best guy the Republicans could throw at Donald Trump is the guy who begged for Donald Trump’s endorsement back when Trump was a full-scale birther on national TV. It’s a wonder Republicans don’t see the problem yet.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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