Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney revealed Monday evening that he referred to as the White House through the Biden administration when Special Counsel Jack Smith was investigating Donald Trump to urge President Joe Biden to preemptively pardon him.
“I called a member of the White House, one of the senior advisers to President Biden. And I said, if the Justice Department decides to indict President Trump, I hope President Biden will immediately eliminate that, and that he will provide a pardon immediately. Why? Number one, I don’t want the anger and the hate and the vitriol. But number two: We just can’t begin to be prosecuting political opponents,” Romney mentioned throughout a dialog with NCS’s Dana Bash at an occasion hosted by Drew University in Monmouth, New Jersey.
“Pardoning at that point would have been a way to make that very clear,” added Romney.
“What did they say back to you?” requested Bash.
“They didn’t do that,” Romney mentioned, smiling.
That revelation got here whereas discussing the Trump administration’s latest indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, which Romney mentioned he disagrees with: “The idea that the system of justice is used to punish political opponents is a very dangerous path to go down.”
“I just don’t think that’s the right path to go down. I’d go down a different path,” he added.
Romney said last year that if he had been Biden he would have “immediately pardoned” Trump as soon as the Justice Department introduced indictments.
Romney additionally supplied up his opinion of why Trump is pursuing Comey: Humiliation.
“The most powerful negative emotion is humiliation. If you’ve been humiliated, the response is the most significant,” Romney mentioned. “And I think President Trump, when he was not in office, was humiliated by these actions where he sat in a New York courtroom at the defendant table being chastised by a judge and being attacked by a prosecutor who in his campaign and said he was gonna bring Donald Trump an indictment and put him on trial.”
Now, Romney says Trump is doing precisely what he had promised throughout his reelection marketing campaign.
“He said he was gonna have revenge and retribution, and he is. And he’s trying to have a stronger executive branch because he and the people around him believe that the executive branch is too weak and that it needs to have more power,” he mentioned.
Bash requested if Romney feels that Trump’s aggressive use of the manager department is constitutional.
“In some cases, yes, probably in some cases, no. We’ll see what the Supreme Court says,” he responded.
Romney additionally mentioned he doesn’t need the court docket to permit Trump to take away Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. “I think that’s a huge mistake. The challenge is the Constitution doesn’t actually describe independent agencies.”
During his personal run for president in 2012, Romney was famously mocked by President Barack Obama for saying that Russia posed America’s best geopolitical threat.
Today, Romney’s warnings are proving prescient.
Romney mentioned he had a tough time watching Trump’s summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We talk about humiliation, but Vladimir Putin, come to Alaska and have a red carpet. Oh boy … This is unimaginable. And we just have to stand up for our friends in Ukraine,” he mentioned.
Romney mentioned “I’m not a tariff guy” and that he thinks the aggressive approach President Trump is imposing tariffs is fallacious.
“In the past, we’ve tried to build power by making friends around the world and, and bringing people here, legal immigrants and H1-B visa and so forth. We’ve been building power. He’s saying we’ve been building power too long. We want to exercise it,” mentioned Romney, including in disbelief, “Going after Canada, for Pete’s sake. Canada!”
Though he mentioned China deserves excessive tariffs, it needs to be coordinated with allies to actually put the squeeze on that regime.
The former senator referred to as Trump’s tariffs inflationary and mentioned he is now going to the grocery retailer and cooking meals a couple of days every week at residence. Romney mentioned he sees the excessive costs gripping US customers first hand, which he thought-about a serious downside for Republicans.
“I am shocked at the prices in the grocery store. I mean, everything is $5 or more,” Romney mentioned. He admitted that he has a style for a high-protein cereal that now prices $10. “It’s unbelievable to me the worth of these items.
“And it only pours, like, four bowls!”
Romney instructed Jake Tapper in December that he thought JD Vance could be the subsequent GOP presidential nominee and stands by that also.
He mentioned Vance, whom Romney referred to as “brilliant,” won’t solely be the Republican nominee in 2028, but additionally has a powerful likelihood of turning into president.
“I’m not saying that’s my preference, but I’m saying we’ll see that the Democrats are able to put up,” Romney instructed the gang and added, “I don’t have a home in either political party,”
It’s a singular place for the previous bearer of the Republican celebration to be in. Romney traced his compass again to a lesson from his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, who taught him, “There is no pain like being indicted by your own conscience.”
Romney harkened again to his Michigan roots when requested by Bash in regards to the devastating shooting on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, on Sunday.
”Whether it’s that church or any church, an assault on a non secular establishment the place individuals are worshiping is unimaginable, unthinkable and inexcusable,” Romney acknowledged.
Romney, who’s Mormon, instructed Bash he has cousins who had been worshipers on the congregation.
“My church has a heritage of having faced persecution in the past. And you wonder, well, are we in for another bout of this,” he mentioned whereas additionally lamenting the recent shooting at a Catholic church and rise in antisemitism as nicely.
Violence has additionally taken a private flip for Romney with the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.
He instructed Bash that two of his grandchildren attend the college. “It becomes associated with this terrible act of what presumably was a very troubled young man,” Romney mentioned.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has steadfastly spoken out in opposition to the toxicity of social media and its function within the capturing. Romney says Cox has distinguished himself by drawing that line throughout this tragedy.
“There are dark impulses in the human psyche and it gets us angry, gets us to tune in again and again and again. And so our social media has taken over how people get information now, and it finds people to blame,” Romney mentioned.
Romney shared that he wasn’t aware of Kirk earlier than his homicide: “I’ve never listened to Charlie Kirk. So I don’t know him, but I certainly defend his right to express his point of view. And I expressed the right of people that vehemently disagree. That’s what democracy is.”
“What is freedom if we can’t speak freely?”