Republican Senator Mitt Romney is not planning to endorse President Trump in 2020 and is troubled by the recent revelation of his dealing with Ukraine.
According to the Washington Examiner:
Mitt Romney won’t publicly back a presidential contender, neither a Democrat nor a Republican, ahead of the 2020 election.
“I’m not planning on endorsing in the presidential race,” Romney, the losing 2012 Republican nominee, told CNN Thursday. “At this stage, I’m not planning on endorsing in the primary or in the general.”
Romney, 72, the junior senator for Utah and former Massachusetts governor, wanting to sit out the next cycle isn’t surprising given his past spats with his party’s current standard-bearer, President Trump. But the mild-mannered lawmaker’s refusal to get behind a sitting president from his own side of the political aisle as the 2012 Republican presidential nominee would be eyebrow-raising in a pre-Trump era.
Trump so far has three declared primary challengers looking to derail his reelection bid: Bill Weld, another former Massachusetts governor; Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman turned conservative shock jock; and Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina governor and congressman better known for a very public extramarital affair.
Romney also responded to the latest Trump scandal.
According to Fox News:
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who has recently said he may decline to support President Trump’s reelection bid, tweeted on Sunday that it would be ‘troubling in the extreme’ if the president appealed to his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Romney, in a tweet on Sunday, said it was “critical for the facts to come out.”
If the President asked or pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it would be troubling in the extreme. Critical for the facts to come out.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) September 22, 2019
Trump called his conversations with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “perfectly fine and routine.”
“Nothing was said that was in any way wrong,” Trump said.
Romney, who is known to change his opinions frequently has long been an opponent of President Trump.
Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly.
