Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) skewered former President Donald Trump as a RINO, a “Republican in name only,” for floating the “termination” of rules in the Constitution over the weekend.
Joining a growing chorus of his fellow Republicans, Romney encouraged his colleagues to distance themselves from the former president and tore into Trump’s Truth Social post that also dangled the prospect of performing a redo of the 2020 election.
“Well, the Republican Party has long been the party of the Constitution. So when President Trump says he wants to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO,” Romney quipped Monday.
NEW: Sen. Mitt Romney calls the GOP the “party of the constitution” and says when Trump calls for “terminating” parts of it he goes “from being MAGA to being a RINO”. pic.twitter.com/H9qSfwU9Xu
— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) December 5, 2022
Over the weekend, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
The remarks were widely seen as a call to scrap provisions of the Constitution and provoked a swift backlash, including from John Bolton and Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD).
Trump has since backpedaled and snapped at the media, alleging it was peddling “DISINFORMATION & LIES” and insisting that he was arguing steps should be taken to remedy the wrongs of the 2020 election.
“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS,” Trump wrote. “What I said was that when there is ‘MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,’ as has been irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election, steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG. Only FOOLS would disagree with that and accept STOLEN ELECTIONS. MAGA!”
A frequent Trump critic, Romney has long weathered bruising criticisms from disgruntled conservatives who have panned him as a RINO for defecting from the party on numerous occasions, such as during the two impeachments of the former president.
Although Trump backed his 2012 presidential bid, Romney raged against Trump’s campaign in 2016, dismissing him as a “fraud” and condemning his temperament. Romney was joined by almost all other living former Republican presidential nominees at the time in opposing Trump and is iterating encouragement for his colleagues to do the same.
“I think elected officials would distance themselves from him and have been willing to do so for a long time. But what elected officials think is close to irrelevant. The real question is what does the base of the party think, and they’re still firmly behind him,” Romney added.
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Trump announced his 2024 campaign last month against the backdrop of a lackluster GOP midterm election outing. Some in the party, such as Romney, have urged conservatives to ditch Trump and choose a new candidate in the next election.
