Scathing criticism from Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) of former President Donald Trump came to light in an email exchange between the senator and McKay Coppins, writer of the newly released memoir Romney: A Reckoning.
Coppins, an Atlantic writer, spent a significant amount of time with the Utah senator, and he gave the reporter parts of his private journals and lengthy interviews. The book details the complicated relationship, which is a long way from Trump’s endorsement of Romney in his 2012 presidential campaign and 2018 Senate race; the former president eventually called for Romney to be impeached in 2019, but senators cannot be impeached — only expelled.
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As a newly elected senator in 2018, Romney remained mostly quiet on Trump’s presidency. However, months after Trump announced his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria and shut down the government, refusing to reopen until lawmakers agreed to additional border security requests, Romney broke his silence.
In an email with the subject line: “I’m no prophet,” the senator expressed to his advisers his frustrations with Trump.
“I was asked repeatedly to apologize for what I said about Donald Trump, to say that having spent more time with him, I had learned that I was wrong,” the email read. “I demurred. But in truth, I did not imagine that he would be so tragic as president. The incessant lying, the adulterer payoffs, the unwillingness to study and deliberate, the weakening of alliances, the elevation of autocrats, the impetuous decision, the demonizing of others, the divisiveness, the inability to hire and retain people of accomplishment — these are as stunning to me as they are to others. I did not think he would be this bad.”
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Two days before Romney was sworn into the Senate, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing Trump’s behavior since taking office and saying he “has not risen to the mantle of the office.”
Romney found himself as an outsider in the Republican Party when he became the only Republican to vote to remove Trump from office in 2020 and was one of seven GOP senators to vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.
