Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:48 pm
During an interview on Meet The Press, Mitt Romney crumbled when he was pressed and challenged on his previous support for and praise of Donald Trump.
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Transcript via Meet The Press:
CHUCK TODD:
However, when you accepted his endorsement four years earlier, this is what you said about his business background.
(BEGIN TAPE)
MITT ROMNEY:
Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to understand how our economy works, to create jobs for the American people. I spent my life in the private sector, not quite as successful as this guy, but successful nonetheless.
(END TAPE)
CHUCK TODD:
Governor, all those unsuccessful businesses that you outlined on Thursday, Trump Airlines, Trump University, Trump Vodka, those were all failures before 20-12 as well. Were you just sort of saying something you had to say four years ago in order to accept his endorsement?
MITT ROMNEY:
Well, Donald Trump has made a lot of money for himself. And there’s no question that he’s got a lot of money in his pockets and has been successful in that score. But if you look at his record overall, and there are other, by the way, failures, you say, “Okay, he made a lot of money for himself, he inherited a lot of money from his dad.” But this is not a guy who’s a self-made man. And this is a guy who’s crushed a lot of people along the way.
CHUCK TODD:
But why’d you say nice things about him four years? Why did you say so many nice things about his business career when clearly you’re not impressed?
MITT ROMNEY:
You know, he’s made a lot of money for himself. And I’m gracious enough in a setting where someone has endorsed me to point out that he’s been successful, made a lot of money. He has a lot of hotels and so forth. But you can’t also ignore the fact that he’s had a lot of failures. And he tries to sell himself in this campaign as nothing but successful. He’s not a loser.
You know what? He’s lost time and time again. And he’s crushed a lot of people in the process. And the thing that I find most unusual, and perhaps outrageous, is that even though he says he’s worth $10 billion, he finds it in his interest to go out and bilk people of $10,000 here, $15,000 there for Trump University. These people have really been scammed. And I want to make sure that the American people are not subject to the same kind of scam as we nominate a president.
CHUCK TODD:
I understand that. But, you know, you did, you laid out a whole bunch of things that you thought disqualified Trump, not just his business background, you thought his support for terrorists could lead to a trade war, you were pretty critical of the vulgar language that he uses, the insulting of Muslims. But, you know, he was pretty insulting of Muslims four years ago. He was the face of the birther movement, which has been totally discredited.
Mitt Romney never answered Chuck Todd’s questions. In fact, he didn’t address the fact that he knew that Trump was a racist birther before he sought the endorsement of the billionaire. The problem for Romney is that the facts don’t lie.
As I wrote in 2012, hours before Trump hosted a fundraiser for Romney, he went on a full birther rant. During an interview with CNBC, Trump said, “Nothing’s changed my mind. You have a huge group of people. I walk down the street, and people are screaming please a publisher came out last week and had a statement about a young man doing a book, born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. The publisher came out and said we made a mistake. What do we do? Oh, we made a mistake. That’s not the way life works. He’s a young man doing a book and he said what he believed to be the truth. So there are a whole lot of things. His mother was never in the hospital, they don’t know which hospital it was, his grandmother said he was born in Kenya. It all wouldn’t matter except if you’re born in a foreign country, you’re not allowed to be president, so this is a minor detail. So the publisher comes out last week and made this statement and said we made a mistake. Is it an important thing? In a way, it is because it says you’re not allowed to be president if you’re not from the country. I’m not fanning flames. This is something that came out last week; a lot of people are questioning his birth certificate, questioning the authenticity of his birth certificate. I’ve been known as being a very smart guy for a long time. I don’t consider myself birther or not birther but there are some major questions here, and the press just refuses to cover it.”
Mitt Romney created Donald Trump, and now he is lying to save the Republican Party from a catastrophic defeat in November. Mitt Romney elevated Donald Trump in 2012. Romney helped to create Trump as a political figure, but he won’t be honest and take responsibility for what he has done. Mitt Romney only supports racism when it is used against the nation’s first African-American president. When the same racist hate tactics are being used to hijack the Republican Party, Romney finds his backbone and demands that Trump must be stopped.
The only person with less credibility in this Republican circular firing squad than Donald Trump is Mitt Romney.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
