The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins is out with the first excerpt of his highly anticipated biography of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), timed to the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s announcement today that he will not seek re-election.

Why it matters: Romney — the only GOP senator to vote to convict former President Trump in his first impeachment trial — was brutally honest about his Republican colleagues over the course of two years of interviews with Coppins, a fellow Utahn.

Highlights:

  • On Jan. 2, 2021, Romney texted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to warn about extremist threats law enforcement had been tracking in connection with pro-Trump protests on Jan. 6. McConnell never responded.
  • Romney kept a tally of the dozen-plus times that Republican senators privately expressed solidarity with his criticism of Trump. “You’re lucky,” McConnell once told him. “You can say the things that we all think.”
  • Romney shared a unique disgust for Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who he thought were too smart to believe Trump won the 2020 election but “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”
  • He also was highly critical of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who reinvented his persona to become a Trump acolyte after publishing a best-selling memoir about the working class that Romney loved. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney said.

Zoom in: After House impeachment managers finished a presentation about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, McConnell told Romney: “They nailed him.”

  • Taken aback, Romney said Trump would argue he was just investigating alleged corruption by the Bidens — the subject of House Republicans’ present-day impeachment inquiry.
  • “If you believe that,” McConnell replied, “I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”

The bottom line: Romney said he never felt comfortable at a Senate GOP conference lunch after voting to convict Trump in 2020. “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” he told Coppins a few months after Jan. 6.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    He’s outspoken because he knew his days were numbered and it didn’t matter anymore.

    Would you rather he go full MAGA?

    • RaincoatsGeorge
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I mean come on now. It’s like saying well yes he’s a registered Nazi but it’s not like he’s in the SS!

        • RaincoatsGeorge
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          It would not matter to me. They’re all maga as far as I’m concerned. There are no more moderate conservatives. A moderate conservative is just a democrat.

          • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            So do you just have a cartoon-villain view of everybody who doesn’t agree with your politics? You can’t see the difference between Mitt Romney and Lauren Boebert?